You started your company to bring your goods or services to the consumer market. You intended to share with the world your unique concept while providing them with a positive experience. All of that sounds wonderful on the surface, but you have to reach your customer base to be productive and achieve your goals. Luckily, there are several ways to market your business.

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Letterbox Drops

While some may think that regular mail is a thing of the past, consider your perceptions when you receive real mail. The feeling of holding something tangible in your hand is unique. Being able to review it, front and back, and then revisit it at a later date affects people. Mail is front of mind and cannot be closed away in an inbox or quickly deleted. 

This is why letterbox drops are an effective way to market your business to consumers. The mailers and flyers are easy to put up on the fridge or around the house as a reminder to use your company when they need it. When the advertisements are eye-catching, they can entice the recipient to go to you for service or purchase. One of the main reasons you should use letterbox drops is their ability to reach a broad consumer audience with ease.

Blogging

Once you have established your website, it is helpful to add content. Everywhere you look today, there are articles and How-Tos with suggestions that you never even knew you needed. By adding a blog to your company’s site, you can create content and instructions that pertain directly to your business. Generate articles that inform people about your products and how to use them, along with tips and tricks that will be useful.

Blogging can be a boon to your business. Reach out to competitors or companies with similar values to your own. Become collaborative and partner with others to showcase each other’s respective products. Highlight unique ways to use the goods that will benefit the reader and keep them returning to your site. Show them that you are an expert in your field.

Here is a video showing you how to get traffic to your blog for greater exposure.

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Read Reviews

When customers review your products, they generally do so on a variety of online platforms. This can range from your company website, Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook, to everything in between. People can praise your product or throw it under the proverbial rug. If you have an employee in charge of social media, they are the best one to handle this role.

Reading customer reviews is more than looking them over. The first step is to find the reviews online and read them all. Ask your employee to respond to each review on every platform. The positive reviews deserve appreciation and thanks. The negative reviews can include a call to action for the reviewer to contact your company for assistance, a replacement, or a refund depending on the circumstances. Always be positive and thank people for their purchase, regardless of the outcome. The personal touch of responding to reviews shows consumers that you care enough to give them attention and acknowledgment. 

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Be creative and get noticed by putting your business directly in the hands of consumers. Market your company effectively. Thank customers and reach out to resolve problems whenever they arise.

Once you’ve set up a marketing strategy, you might find that it’s not delivering the results that you hoped for. If that’s the case, then it’s important to ensure that you take the right steps to correct the situation. These are some of the key reasons why your marketing strategy might not be carrying you home. 

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You’ve Hired The Wrong Team 

Your business will only be as strong as the team holding it up. If you fail to hire the right people for the job then this could cause you to lose money. It is essential you put in lots of time and effort to find the right people to work for you. This includes putting what qualities, skills, and qualifications you want them to possess on the job advert. 

Alternatively, you could use the help of a recruitment agency to find the right people for you. This ensures you get good quality workers while still having time to focus on the task at hand. 

Don’t forget, it’s always smart to bring in outside eyes to help you boost your marketing strategy. A small business marketing consultant will ensure that you can explore new ideas and angles with your marketing or promotion that could be incredibly successful. 

You Haven’t Completed Enough Research 

Another point to consider is whether or not you have completed enough research at the start of your business life. If you are marketing your company, then you need to know exactly who your target audience is and what they are interested in. By knowing this key information, you’ll be able to explore their pain points and what makes them tick. This is the best way to ensure that you have success marketing to your specific audience. If you don’t complete the right research, the demand simply isn’t going to be viable. 

You’re Not Thinking Outside The Box 

Next, you need to make sure that you are going beyond the basics when marketing your business. It’s easy to stay in the box with basic strategies but if you can go further than this, you are always going to see greater results. For instance, you might want to look at guerilla marketing strategies. Or, you could even use influencers to help take your brand further than before. 

You’ve Got Bad Reviews 

Finally, it’s possible that the reason your marketing strategy is failing is due to the fact that your company has a lot of negative reviews. To deal with this, we recommend that you think about responding to the reviews instead of ignoring them. If you ignore negative reviews, it’s like a gaping wound. It will continue to impact customers and ultimately it’s going to lead to you losing a lot of future sales. Indeed, research shows that 80% of customers now check reviews before they even think about committing to a purchase of a product or service. 

We hope this helps you understand some of the key points that you should consider when you are building the right marketing strategy for your business.

Podcasting is sweeping the corporate world, as customers, employees and investors demand more convenient and compelling methods of engagement.

Company Podcasting an industry leader, has flagged a massive shift in how companies around the world are embracing podcasts to engage their stakeholders.

Many companies have considered podcasting, but they find it difficult to produce, find an owner, or find a compelling host – this is where Company Podcasting leads the pack – it’s hosts are bachelor degree educated, and non-executive directors of Australian companies – they speak your language, they put your executive and leadership teams at ease, and they stay on script.

As stakeholder groups around the world fragment, the value of podcasting is beginning to be embraced and realised.

Traditionally communicating with investors is poorly done and has little cut through. Investors know they are reading highly polished content that in all likelihood has been written to avoid litigation and meet minimum disclosure requirements – investors know this, that’s why the open rates on investor emails are at an all time low.

However, putting on some headphones and having the CEO or chairperson directly talking to you, you can hear their intonation and character – you get a sense of their authenticity, their drive, and you are maximising all of your leaders skills to deliver a highly targeted message directly to your target audience – and the audiences are listening.

Audiences (and workplaces) love podcasts because unlike video they can continue working – either listening through headphones, their phone, in the car, or with a google/apple/amazon smart speaker.

Podcasts are also a lot easier and cheaper to produce than full video – and those being interviewed for a podcast don’t have to worry about what they look like, and worry about all the visual components of the podcast.

Editing a podcasting to ensure consistent corporate messaging is also much easier – Company Podcasting provide unlimited edits with each podcast – you can’t easily edit a video mid sentence – you can with audio – we have the technology to stitch conversations together that provide clear and consistent messaging – that meet all of your compliance needs.

Company podcasting even provide full transcripts that you can post to stock exchanges to meet your continual disclosure requirements.

Lastly – Company Podcasting will split your podcast into 10-30 sound bites – this gives you endless opportunities to spread the one recording into many social media streams – think linkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok – you can achieve all of this without the burn out!

Whatever your stakeholder group – www.CompanyPodcasting.com is a global leader and can deliver high quality, fully hosted, fully edited, compliant, compelling and professional podcasts in lightening speeds at a fraction of the price of traditional stakeholder messaging.

The world is changing, so should your communications.

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Selling products online requires different tactics to selling products in a physical store or through an in-person sales agent. Customers aren’t able to physically touch or test the product when buying online. Instead, you have to find other ways to give customers the information they need and build trust. Below are just five tips on how to make online products more attractive.

Use professional photographs

If you’re not a professional photographer, you should avoid taking your own photos of your products. Similarly, you should avoid using manufacturer photos. Instead, hire a professional photographer to take your own high-quality original photos for online purposes. 

A professional will know how to get the best lighting and angles and will be able to create a sense of consistency between all your product photos (even if you’re selling products from a variety of different brands, it’s worth keeping a consistency between them for the sake of your own brand identity). When hiring a photographer, look for someone with a good online reputation. Specialist photographers such as real estate photographers or fashion photographers may be worth hiring for certain types of product. Models and props could be worth hiring for certain products too.

Consider offering multiple photographs per product. You could even consider 3D photographs. Such photos can help to build customer trust by offering a fuller idea of what a product looks like. 

Add a video

A video can provide even more information than a photo. This could include video adverts or explainer videos. 

You could use a video to demonstrate your product in person. Alternatively, you could consider an animated video to help explain the technical aspects behind your product. As with photos, consider hiring professionals to create your video.

Write enticing product descriptions

The product description can be very important when selling a product online. It should contain detailed information about the product, while also being engaging.

Rather than using lots of big blocks of text, consider using bullet points and multiple sections in your product descriptions to present information in a way that’s easy to skim-read. Make sure to cover all the specific information that customers are likely to want to know such as measurements and ingredients/materials. Consider also adding in a few keywords to help with SEO. A professional copywriter could be worth hiring to help to get the best out of your product descriptions. 

Display positive customer reviews

Many customers rely on reviews to determine whether they trust an online product. Consider allowing customers to leave reviews under your product – or highlight select reviews left by some of your happiest customers. Haven’t got any customer reviews? Consider a few of these tricks for building customer reviews. 

Advertise discounts and freebies

Lots of people shop online instead of at their local store in order to find better deals. Throwing in freebies or notifying customers of discounts could be a way of attracting more customers and securing more sales. These could be deals for a limited time only in order to encourage customers to snap up your product fast.

For any business to run smoothly, it is all to do with the outward perception. Marketing is such a crucial component for any company that it becomes the primary investment. But because marketing is evolving at such a pace, it can prove difficult to keep up with. And as we are well into 2020, we’ve got to focus on the key digital marketing trends and how it will evolve over this year. While there is a lot of focus on technology, such as AI, the main focus will be on people. Let’s show you what we mean.

Did you know that companies will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their video advertisements that will never be shown on TV? The new median is the only video sharing platforms but their audiences demand something new. You have probably already seen this at work as YouTube ads can sometimes be skipped after just 5 seconds. Other advertisements can last anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds long. However, these don’t have a skip button so they better be worth it to sit through or else, the user will click away. YouTube tracks this so an ineffective advertisement will less likely to be shown. But, hiring companies out to do filming is very expensive so how can a small business make the most of what funds are available? Film it yourself!

All creative minds on deck!

Let the battle of ideas commence! As aforementioned your advertisement will only last a maximum of 30 seconds if that is your intention of a longer play. However, most ads need to be great for the first few seconds in order to grab the attention of the viewer. Therefore you need to make a two-part idea in the same ad. The first few seconds have to be something that is thought-provoking, challenging, scary, exciting or something of this nature to make sure the viewer doesn’t ‘skip’. All your creative minds need to assemble of think of the perfect ideas for this.

Start sending early

Start sending out advertisements for actors early! One cannot imagine the absolute pain it is to find the right actors for your production. Specifically reach out on online job search engines such as Indeed and LinkedIn. Professional actors is what you should aim for, but if you don’t mind working with students then include them in the possible choices also. The key is to get your idea formed and begin sending out notices that you’re looking for actors as quick as you can. Some actors may need to read for the part, others have the exact look you want and thus you may rely on their previous work as a reference point.

Introduce your business

If you are going to give the audience something real, how about filming your business? Show the inside of your warehouse and how it operates. Supply your business with the best equipment you can afford first so you make a good first impression. Check out the forklifts for sale Melbourne at Auslift which are modern and perfect for lifting pallets from storage. Introduce the audience to your business by showing the genuine ways in which you operate day to day.

Business advertisements have really been given a new lease of life with online video sharing platforms. Indeed there is a skip button but if you can do just enough to hold the attention of just 5% of the audience for more than 5 seconds, you stand a large chance of making sales by drawing attention to your business.

This story looks at search engine optimisation and public relations (and generally all creative writing) and how you can achieve significantly better results with what I consider to be minimal input. It can apply to any creative writing that may one day end up online. It most definitely applies to journalists, even speech writers and I bet you that smart newspapers and online agencies around the world are training their staff on exactly this topic.

Simple SEO applied to your writing can significantly improve the number of visitors to your article
Think about the lifetime of online articles – potentially years!

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Public Relations (PR) doing in the same sentence?

If we take the extreme view that Journalists simply copy and paste press releases as stories then it figures that the text being published (online) should be optimised for a search engine (ie Search Engine Optimisation). The logic is that an optimised piece of text will rank much higher on a search engine, and will allow your target audience to find that particular piece of text through a search engine such as Google.

In the example above it assumes press releases are simply copied or pasted, but in general this isn’t how the system works. Usually PR firms send their press releases and journalists look for newsworthy content that they can either add to, or change to fit their publication or angle. This example is much closer to the truth, so in this next example let’s assume that an optimised press release receives editorial changes of +/-30% to the original. This means that 70% of your optimised release is still being published, again you’re probably still sitting on a search engine optimised winner.

Following the rules of SEO while writing a press release in this example is a sure fired way to ensure you maximise the number of eyeballs on your carefully crafted message. This translates to more of whatever your object was when you wrote the press release, be it more enquiries, sales, awareness etc.

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Isn’t SEO just for IT geeks?

This is where I think the topic gets really interesting. SEO has primarily been the domain of IT professionals who optimise websites to improve your ranking in Google, and also a bunch of dodgy email spammers who promise the world for only $12.95 a month.

However with standardisation of websites through things like templates much of the html (the framework for a website) has been optimised for you straight out of the box. In our example we are focusing on the content on sites that you have no direct power, so SEO for the frame work of HTML is pointless. So the only thing left for PR firms, Journalists and creative writers to focus on is what is actually being written. If you could look at all the information written on SEO in one sitting (which is impossible) you’d find that well over 40% of the suggestions made can be directly or indirectly applied to your creative writing, the hardest part is trying to find the information to apply directly to your own work. I look at SEO as a simple process, you spend a few minutes thinking about what you’re about to do, what you think will work and you begin the creative writing with this in mind. During the editing phase you spend a few minutes thinking over the guiding principles and again with the bigger picture/end result in full view you review your content and apply any finishing SEO touches to it.

How important is SEO to PR?

Very! The difference could be over 100,000 visitors(1)

This is a question of measurement, better put, what is the measurable performance benefit for the additional effort required? For the most part this has been unmeasurable, you generally do not  get a chance at writing two pieces of text, one optimised the other not and being able to measure the pairs of eyes that have read the article. Compounding the problem is that you don’t have the website statistics for your particular article on the newspaper website, and lastly what elements of SEO apply to writing a press release (this definitely isn’t taught in Universities that I know of – and if you can find a University that is willing, I’ll give a two hour lecture on how to optimise your writing for an online universe!).

Technology and measurement have come a long way in the last five years, for instance with a few clicks and a bit of cut and paste code you can measure the online performance of any text on your website. I am sure that Google Analytics has made a great many of people richer, and has helped an even greater many more deliver information to an audience that requires it.

What specifically do I need to understand about SEO and how I can apply it to PR?

You can optimise optimisation! Use the 80/20 rule to focus on the 20% of SEO that will deliver you 80% of the gain. The hardcore IT professionals spend their life refining their SEO techniques, but at the top end of SEO a 5% improvement can win them more business and a reputation. At the creative writing level if you have the beginners tricks under your hat then you’re 80% ahead of the pack.

Writing an optimised press release requires a slight change in how you think about crafting your message, although the actual change to the press release or text is generally so subtle that to the general reader there is no difference at all.

Here are some really basic points on SEO that most creative writers do not consider, and at their own peril!

Step 1. Complete before you begin writing. In defining your message and target audience, have you defined what they’ll be searching for to find this information? Create a list of five or so keywords/phrases that you think sum up your press release, think about what people will be searching for both sets of keywords/phrases should be the same/similar (if you need to decide which ones to use go with your gut about what people will be searching for – if you don’t know, simply sit down at Google and try and find the information yourself, look at what your searching and how you refine your search – get creative!). Rank them in order of importance.

Step 2. When reviewing your title of the press release, does it contain the top two keywords/phrases you selected from step 1?

Step 3. Does the first paragraph contain the top five keywords, with at least one of them repeated once.

Step 4. Your keywords and phrases can be reworded – imagine a keyword was ‘search engine optimisation’ repeat it throughout the first few paragraphs but reword it like ‘search engine optimise’

Step 5. You should be bolding a few of the keywords, not all of them, but at least one or two in the first two paragraphs.

Step 6. You should always always include an image. Again using the SEO example, make sure you have an image with a name like ‘search-engine-optimisation.jpg’, give it a caption with similar wording.

Step 7. Include (where relevant) a few relevant links to websites that Google ranks higly – this is simple, Google search the keyword, and look at the first page of results, these are obviously what Google considers search engine optimised for your selected keyword/phrase. If Google sees you’re linking out to those sites then the chances are they’ll think you’re more of an authority as well.

Step 8. Review your creative writing, look for new opportunities. As you wrote the press release you may have included new ideas, thoughts, products etc that have a whole new set of keywords, maybe this should be in another press release – Search engine optimisation is all about focusing on a few keywords (also known as keyword density)

Step 9. This is the last step – once you get published, send the link to any websites that came up when searching your keywords. If they link to that article then chances are Google will look at you and think that if the current authority on that keyword is linking to your article then you too must also be an authority and worth putting on the front page of Google.

Step 10. Include your list of keywords (also known as tags) at the bottom of your creative writing. This will assist Journalists and any online publication to tag your writing for you, using the intended keywords. If you leave them out then they’ll make them up for you and you’re at their mercy.

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Is there a way to tell if my writing is SEO optimised for online publication?

With websites like www.ReversePR.com.au you can simply add your press releases, let it do the magic, and at the bottom of the press release you can review how many people have read the article, the higher the number of views the more successful it can be considered as being an optimised press release.

Experiment! Write a few different press releases, and release them to online sites and see how they go, does one go better than another?

One of the best examples I can find is this press release – http://www.reversepr.com.au/2009/09/21/1397/alex-fevola-in-temelli-jewellery-for-2009-brownlow-awards/

It was released right before the Brownlow Awards (this means there is going to be lots of search traffic about ‘brownlow awards’, ‘alex fevola’), it’s about a celebrity and I think the title of the press release, along with the image and the first few paragraphs nailed this one home as an SEO winner! What keywords do you think the writer used? The writer of this should receive a pat on the back but I think the sheer number of hits is reward enough!

I (Matt Schmidt) will be writing more on this topic over the coming weeks, however if you want a hand, have a question or need some advice feel free to drop me an email matt@mylifemynews.com.au.

Lastly, did you notice this article has been search engine optimised? If done well you shouldn’t have noticed!

(1) Depending on what site it runs on, how well you’ve optimised it and what you’ve optimised it for (topic, keyword, audience, time of day, event driven, and timeliness). Obviously there are a lot of other contributing factors but the point is you have the power to significantly improve the number of people who read what you want them to read.

Which business name is best?

Regularly I hear people discussing business names and what they should choose, the ensuing debates can become comical as people slander each other’s choices, but I digress. It’s not easy and it affects a lot of things, from website domain names, search engine optimisation, recall ability, how to spell it, business name registration and availability – the list goes on.

Well, what I’m about to write isn’t earth shattering and I know I’ve heard it before, however I think this technique is brilliant and really shows your willingness to let the customers and the data make the decision for you. Continue Reading

Young entrepreneur Clint Salter was born and raised in Camden (Sydney’s Western Suburbs) where his relationship with the world of entrepreneurship began at an early age. At age 16 Clint opened up a dance studio where he taught after school while completing his Year 10 Certificate. Continue Reading

With an increasing number of people reading, writing, and commenting on blogs, the way we use the web is shifting in a fundamental way. Instead of being passive consumers of information, more and more Internet users are becoming active participants.

Blogs allow you to increase the number of readers and followers, increase your profile and show people that you are current. Once you have the followers, a blog can easily help you network between the groups and build relationships that you never had before. Having a link from your website to your blog, simplifies the process for clients and fans to connect with you. Continue Reading

Don’t you just hate it when you open a magazine and one of your competitors is featured and you just know that they will get customers from the publicity. You ask why were they featured and not me? The answer is a public relations program. Continue Reading