Learning What Marketing Works – The Hard Way!

Having being in business for a long time I have learned many lessons the hard way. The purpose of this blog is to point you in the right direction when it comes to marketing, so you don’t make these same mistakes!

In the past I had many sales people call me and say that their marketing would bring me more clients. I would say how many? They would say no marketing company can give a guarantee. So, if I liked the sound of what they were saying and they showed some empathy, I would usually “give it a go”. Guess what, apart from the hayday of Yellow Pages, nothing worked. To the point where I wouldn’t even make the money back on the investment I laid out.

There is a clue there. Marketing MUST be an investment, you must get some kind of guarantee. I was so annoyed at being ripped off by big National companies that I decided to put my electronics and software training to good use. I decided to do all the marketing for my companies myself. That was a long time ago, and I have never looked back.

Around 2005 a close friend said why don’t you offer these services to other businesses? And I now do. Over the years there has been many changes on what works best, but here on the cusp of 2014 is my advice for all you business owners.

1.     What works best today is a powerful mix of onsite optimisation together with a flexible, fully managed online ad campaign. (Flexiads)
2.    All this is great to know, but 100% useless unless you give it a go.

The marketing that didn’t work for me included: All paper advertising, email campaigns, linkedin, facebook, facebook ads, having someone else run an adwords campaign for me, Yell.com now hibu and still as bad, BT customer street and lots of others.

My mission is to help businesses like yours achieve your goals, get more customers and get the reward of more profit for a job well done. Some of you are scared to invest, I know, I have been there. This is why I came up with FlexiAds.

Starting at just £59 or the Dollar equivalent you get one months worth of online marketing which I guarantee WILL get visitors to your website and even calling you directly! After one month we will know whether your campaign has been a success or not. One business who started with us in November received 98 visitors to her website and converted these visits to 8 new clients worth £2,400 per year! For just £59. The thing is we know that by doubling her investment we can get even more visitors and more new clients and more profits! Isn’t this what you want?

We listened to people and they told us they didn’t like contracts. So FlexiAds don’t have a contract. You just pay for a month at a time. This gives you confidence as only companies who are unsure about their services would LOCK you into a 12 month contract. FlexiAds also give you FLEXIBILITY. If like our lady with 8 new clients, if that was enough for now you can stop your ads. If you wanted more clients and more profits you could increase your budget. This has the effect of smoothing out those peaks and troughs in your business cycle.

Also with FlexiAds you get a Duncan, a me on the end of a phone 9am to 9pm everyday! I’m also on Skype or you can visit me, whatever is best for you.

More information on FlexiAds can be found by CLICKING HERE.

10 Interesting Digital Marketing Techniques - CLICK HERE

Thank you and Happy New Year 2014

About the author:

Duncan Malloch is an entrepreneur from the UK with specialism’s in online marketing, website design and search engine optimization. If you are looking for a one stop shop to promote your business online, visit the PWP Web design website by CLICKING HERE. Thank you

Microsites and Their Benefits to Business

Today’s business world comprises of several amazing things and one of them is the ability to create sub brands of the main brand. Traditionally, companies who had a strong brand could translate this into sub brands. These individual sub brands served to strengthen the company’s overall image, and add consistency. Now with advancements in website technology, the modern business age has added its own trends regarding the marketing of these sub brands and a popular way to promote them is known as microsites.  

So what exactly are these microsites? Basically they are smaller, more focused websites which concentrate on a specific product, service or geographical area. A microsite when used as a single individual web page that functions as a discrete entity within an existing website is referred to as a landing page. Today many top businesses have various websites for each product or sub-brand they wish to market. These targeted websites provide many benefits not only to the specific product but to the parent brand and its umbrella of products or services. A microsite should carry across the design theme and feel of your main website and be tightly focused. Usually the webpage is very heavily and highly optimised using identified and specifically targeted keywords or phrases, to attract specific customers.

As there are several benefits of creating microsites, many companies are now jumping on this successful bandwagon. There are thousands of microsites online all over the world. Many feature great content and use creative techniques to promote your services or products. In order to increase your sales of particular products or services, businesses continuously develop new targeted microsites to gain amazing results. Let’s have a look at the benefits that you can expect by having a microsite designed for your business:

• ·         As a business owner the first thing that you should consider when thinking about your professional website is SEO. Search engine optimisation is the key factor in successful online marketing. Microsites have their own unique URL’s, or web addresses which help your customers to find your products and services more easily. Keyword analysis will allow you to choose a rich domain name that will give added power to get found in the popular search engines like Google.

• ·         Microsites are an effective branding option for those businesses who are looking to launch new products or services. You can use them to specifically focus on your target market which will make you stand out as an expert.
• ·         Creating microsites are recommended should you wish to update detailed information about new products and services, resulting in more engagement and contact with customers.

• ·         Microsites can be designed to market seasonal promotions that may have short life span. There are several businesses that use this technique successfully to market their at key times of year.
• ·         A microsite makes the perfect experimental marketing tool. If you want to experiment with your online strategies then this could be your best option.
• ·         The best benefit a small microsite gives you is that it is the cheapest way to get your business online. Because these microsites have less pages and are highly targeted means that they can usually be developed and designed easily, quickly and cheaply.

Above are just some of the benefits of microsites. Your business can gain much more by hiring the services of a web designer with microsite design experience. The one aspect to remember is to focus on just one product, one service or one geographical area. Figure out who your target market is and then your designer can combine this information with keyword analysis to create an effective, fully optimised online presence for your business. 

Duncan Malloch is the microsite specialist at PWP Web Design

You Can Have Great Web Designs and Great Customer Service

Web design services have gained immense popularity as an effective way to boost customers to your business. As one of the best internet marketing techniques, various website design companies have sprung up as everyone tries to find a niche in this lucrative industry. While this is commendable, it has presented a whole new challenge to potential clients and consumers. How do you choose among the plethora of web page designers available?

PWP Web Deisgn Services

To ensure that you get a transformational service which will help your business to the next level, web design skills on their own, are simply not enough. There is need, as with any business, to ensure that your chosen web design company has impeccable customer service. While most of the companies offer a great web design service, their downfall comes with very poor customer service. What should you look for? Customer services which offer easy access between the client and the designer. Thus enabling you to get the best overall product to promote your business online. To arrive at the perfect combination of the two, is surprisingly easy when you think about it. You have to choose a web design company, not have them choose you as a client. If when you call your company you here “sales chatter” in the background, then you know it is a call center. The chances of getting through to the person designing your website, is almost nil, once you have handed over your bank details! The smaller web design companies offer well executed, functional designs and excellent customer service, all at a great price.

Helping with Your Bottom Line

Like everything in life, to get the best out of your web development company, you just need to be a little careful. This ensures that you find a company that meets your needs and one with which you can build a long standing relationship. Building your website is a step by step process which takes both time and some basic homework into things like keyword analysis. In order that you benefit fully from web design services, it’s critical that your business goal and company message comes across and your branding is recognizable across all advertising. To achieve this, you need great two way communication, the value of this should never be underestimated; you must be able to communicate directly with your web designer inside and outside normal working hours, say from 9 to 9 everyday.  As opposed to larger, national companies who seem to care more about profit than customer service, you will have no call center to speak to, charging you high telephone rates just for being on hold!

Example websites

You don’t want that, so with a smaller independent website company you can chat to the actual person designing your website and you’ll be able to discuss  your, ensuring  every aspect is  integrated into each web page design. The message you want to get across to your customers is also vital, it is this message that will turn a website browser into a prospective customer. Make sure that you understand the full cost of your website and that there are no hidden extras. Most companies stick to their original estimate and cost only increase if extra web pages or significant redesigns are necessary.

Search Engine Optimisation

Once you have defined your business goal and have a budget in mind, choose a web design company which has the prerequisite experience and expertise to ensure you get tailored-made website designs, not rehashed templates. When evaluating your designers’ experience, look at the websites they have completed for other clients, their “portfolio” and see whether they resonate with what you want. If not, then speak to the designer and find out if they have the ability to handle what you want. Optimisation is important so you must check to see that previous clients are ranking in the top pages of Google for their target keywords.

Variety of high performance websites

To achieve an engaging design together with first class customer service, is an investment that often works out cheaper than the big companies too, just be choosy. This is the only way to meet your goals, budget and web design needs and………………………….Be Happy.

Happy people please call 07795 681 507 to speak direct to Duncan Malloch website consultant

For web design services please click here

For SEO advice please click here

For Microsites please click here

Where Do Your Customers Come From?

How to keep Track of Phone and Email Enquiries

When you receive a phone call or email into your business, it is vitally important to track the original source. Tracking of all your marketing activities is absolutely crucial. Once you know what is working and what isn’t you can reallocate your marketing activity for maximum effect.

If you have Google analytics installed into your website you are provide with a fantastic tool to tell you what is going on there. But and yes, this could be a big one. Analytics doesn’t tell you if a prospective client rang your phone number from your call to action in your websites description. Because they can do this without even clicking on your website!  If they send you an email from your website, you can set up goals to measure this. I like to set up a goal as reaching the thank you page for this purpose. But once again analytics does not tell you if a customer decided to call your business from the phone number they got off the website.

The challenge seems to be figuring out where your phone call enquiries come from. There are several ways you can monitor this. The most effective, fool proof way is to have a separate telephone number for different marketing activities. One for leaflets, one for advertising in local press, and another for your website. Each month you can get an itemised bill which will show the volume of calls received from each marketing source. The second and cheaper alternative is to ask everyone who calls where they got your number today. Then log them all on a simple tally chart like this.

Day/Source	Leaflets	Press	Website	Word of Mouth	Saw Van
Monday	II	I	IIII	I
Tuesday	I	I	III		I
Wednesday	II	I	IIII	I
Thursday			IIII	II
Friday	II		IIIII II	I

A more comprehensive method of tracking would be the use of a sales funnels like this one:

Name/Source/Action	Source	Enquiry	Follow Up 1	Follow Up 2	Sale
Mrs Smith	Website	Phone			£59.99
Mr Brown	Leaflet	Email	28 Jun 13	1 Jul 13
Miss Jones	WOM	Phone	28 Jun 13		£215.00
Mr Black	Website	Email	29 Jun 13	3 Jul 13	£87.49
Mrs White	Press	Email	1 Jul 13	4 Jul 13

Using these simple tools will make your business more profitable! Without them you will never know where your customers are coming from, and by association you will not know where your profits come from either.

Duncan is an Entrepreneur with specialist skills in website design, search engine optimisation, marketing, photography and electronics. Please do subscribe to our channel to keep up to date, you can also follow PWP Web Design on Twitter and Facebook

Web Design Darlington

web design examples one

As a part of business world we all know how it is difficult to get business and how much efforts it need to get profit from your website? Today with the reaching of internet in everyone’s hand, before using any product or service, customer first search about the company over the web and after confirming all the things, they make their decision.

With such a boom in internet world, every business owner wants to make their website visible for more visitors to gain more profit and rank on search engines. But is only visibility matter to get high business? Or are there other factors too that can affect your online business? It’s a fact that visibility on search engines is necessary but if you look on other side, you will notice that there are various factors that are essential too with online presence.

One of the major factors is designing of the website. It is the first thing that customer see when he/she search about your services and products. The layout of the site, its content and images all are part of the website designing. We all live in a world where everything keeps on changing and in this living environment, having a normal website with some flashy templates will not provide you desired results. You need to make your site in such a way that it attracts more and more customers and apart from this makes your potential customers to stay on your site so that they read about your services and take a look on your products images as well.

web designs example two

Don’t make your website just like an online page. Make it responsive for your precious customers and to make it alive, it needs a professional touch such as Web Design Darlington. Genuine content, designing the site by keeping the concept of SEO in mind and how to generate the revenue is all what these experts do while designing your site. They create your online presence in such a way that it helps Google to rank the site on top results.

Getting business in SEO world is really hard if you don’t have knowledge about how search engines actually works? To make internet presence, a unique, attractive and professionally designed website is all needed and you can get all this with the help of Web Design Darlington. In addition they offer you advices about how can you constantly stay on top pages of Google? And what are the factors you need to consider while running your marketing campaign to generate more revenue?

So now if you are looking for such a firm, remember to do your job first for finding the best SEO and web design professional. Fake companies present everywhere and therefore various companies are there who claims to provide you best, even when they don’t have appropriate experience in the field. While browsing the net check online reviews and compare several company offers, and then make your choice of hiring the expert and professional firm.

Web Design Darlington | Cheap Web Design Darlington

Ultimate Online Marketing

Ultimate Online Marketing

There is a lot more to successfully marketing your business online, than just having a pretty website. A pretty website is no good at all if nobody can find it.

So, you want to market your business online, or increase the effectiveness of your current website. I will give you some advice here which will help you on the road to better success!

The secret sauce is to have your website optimised for the keywords or keyphrases that you want to be found for. Make sense? Well statistics show that each webpage can manage to be effectively optimsed for just two keywords. If you have a business that operates in several areas, I would suggest a separate webpage be optimsed for each area.

That's the website, onsite optimisation. But your website needs more than just optimisation so Google likes it. In fact just as important is that it has to be easy for your potential customers to find their way around it, and to easily contact you. How can you achieve this? Having an easy to follow menu in plain sight. But, the most important aspect of any website is your phone number.

Phone numbers should be in large text (not an image) in the top right of every page. Phone numbers should be preferably local but a mobile is second best. Don't waste money on 0800 numbers or 0844 (local charge) numbers. Nearly everyone's uses mobiles today so having an 0844 number actually costs then money. You don't want to be putting this barrier between a customer and yourself!

The content on the page has to be attractive, in that it is what your potential customers are expecting. They need to know they can trust you.

The Next Step

Now your website is looking the part, both visually and to the Google spiders, you need to let people know about it. This is all about building links. But don't get all your links from one type of source, such as directory listings. Actually Goggle is starting to dislike directory listings so be careful with these. Build your links from places like Google plus, Blogger, you Tube, Facebook, Twitter, Forums and by article submissions.

If this sounds simple, to some it is, but to get it right requires the assistance of an SEO expert. They will make sure the links are relevant and promote the keywords you want. Submitting links is very time consuming, so many businesses outsource this to companies like mine, PWP Web Design. My details are below:

Website: www.pwpwd.co.uk
For Web Design Click Here
For SEO Click Here
PWP Facebook Page Click Here
Email: info@pwpwd.co.uk
Mob: 07795681507

Marketing - Not for Idiots

Not for Idiots

When you spend so much time talking to fellow business owners, do you despair? I am shocked on an almost daily basis as to the lack of business knowledge most of these people have. Certainly in the good old days (remember them), you could get by with just being good at what you do. But people, the world has changed.

It is no longer good enough for you to be good at what you do.

You really should understand cash flow, you really should know where your customers are coming from and how they found you. You should know what your average profit per customer is and how much you have to spent to get them in the door.

I have been in business many years and I have tried most things. Loving innovation and change I lap up books on how to..... How to start a business, how to manage your accounts, how to sell, how to market your services. And this is continually changing so you need to keep up to date. All this is of course in addition to keeping abreast with the latest goings on within your business sector.

If you can’t sell – you’re doomed!

Let me clarify, if you are a one man band or can not afford to hire someone in with sales experience you are doomed. How many people in business just expect people to come to their door? It just doesn’t happen as much today. My God, even the prostitutes are advertising!

Here is some Free advice if you’re interested on marketing your business.

Ask yourself, how many ways are there to market and promote my business? Write them down. Things like TV may be far too expensive so you can cross them off your list for now. But what about the others? What about radio – quite expensive with diminishing audiences that would have to listen at specific times of day to hear your 4 times a day ad. What about paper advertising. Now I would say this depends on your business. Emergency service like 24 hour plumbers and electricians may do well from these. But again for the majority of us you have to appear in front of the reader when they are in buying mode.

You have to be in front of a prospective client when they are in buying mode.

That should trim down a few advertising mediums. Think now about the internet, or rather Google. Nowadays people “Google it” don’t they?  I know I was looking for a 6 panel internal door and Google was where I went to check prices and local stockists. And I bought one after ringing a local supplier.

If you are not on Google your business is Doomed!

Bill Gates said if you don’t have a website, you very soon won’t have a business. The world has become more focused since then. Since 93% of all searches in the UK are done on Google, you have to be there or you are Doomed!  Actually its much worse than that. You see Google's first page gets about 94% of all the clicks. So all the other thousands of pages are fighting over 6%. So the hard reality of it all is, if you are not on the first page of Google your business is doomed.

Duncan Malloch is an entrepreneur and an investor. Since 1978 he has had a keen interest in electronics, computers and the web. Since 2000 he has been quite heavily involved in business and has built up a great understanding of how it and how money works. When the financial collapse came he set up Red Kite Solutions to help local businesses get their fair share of that Google market. You too can tap into this huge resource at www.red-kite-solutions.co.uk Email by clicking HERE

What is your bottom line?

So what does your bottom line look like?

Well you know how things are and it can be a struggle just getting your business into the black and earning you the money you deserve.

Some of the brightest minds in UK businesses know that if your business is to succeed,

you must have a marketing strategy and a fantastic marketing tool to work it.

Talk to the experts right now

People who can show you live examples of

profitable marketing tools they have developed.

www.pwpwd.co.uk

info@pwpwd.co.uk

Tel: 07795 681 507

Diet or a Big Slice of Pie

Diet or a Big Slice of Pie?

To help educate potential clients or business owners interested in website design and search engine optimisation; we are finding that by using metaphors and analogies we promote better understanding. Today’s article is one of many more to come, so please bookmark our blog for further updates.

We see many business owners who have their companies on strict diets. Because their internet marketing is not targeted correctly. This means that their slice of the pie is very thin indeed and correspondingly, results in low enquiry rates and not much business.

What can you do to fatten your business up and get a more significant piece of pie? First of all you need to find out what your potential clients are searching for, and how many of them there are. You can do this by using the “Google keyword tool”. This will give you a breakdown of how many searches are being carried out on Google over the last month, both locally and globally.

Let me introduce you to the pie, your potential clients. In the UK over 93% of searches are carried out using Google. You can optimise your site for Bing, Yahoo any of the others, but that is a diet that could seriously harm your business!

So now we know which piece of pie we want – Google pie please. But, the Google pie comes in lots and lots of slices, (search result pages). Independent research gives us fairly accurate insight into the size of these slices. Here they are in size order. I suggest you go greed and go for the biggest slice!

75% of the Google pie - that is 75% of your potential customers will click on a business that appears in the top half of the results on page one.

19% of your potential clients will click on a business that is listed in the bottom half of the page one results.

This means that a massive 94% of business that it generated through online marketing with Google comes from page one.

The remaining 6% of the pie is distributed among all the remaining pages.

If you know what your target market are searching for, then now you need to optimise your website and target your marketing to get onto the first page of Google, preferably the top half. At PWP Web design we say that if you are on page one for your required search phrase, then you have a great online marketing tool. If you appear anywhere else, you just have a website – and a business on a diet! The decision is yours, let us hope your business soon has a bulging waistline.

PWP Web Design and Search Engine Optimisation guarantees to get your company on to page one of Google’s natural search results.

Contact them today at: blog@pwpwd.co.uk

Why you don't want a website

Background - My background is in electronics, stretching back 30 years. By electronics I mean repairing state of the art equipment down to basic component level and programming computers. My digital background covers online marketing and photography.

So then, I suppose you are wondering why you don't want a website? 

Millions of businesses have websites, and sadly the vast majority of those businesses do not understand that having a pretty website is a waste of time, effort and money! A website has to be a marketing tool. So, then what is the difference between a website and a marketing tool. For me this comes down to where your website appears in the search results for your targeted keywords.

Independent statistics show that well over 95% of all clicks are given to those websites on page 1 of Google. The most going to those sites listed above the fold. The fold is the area seen on your PC, tablet or phone without you having to scroll down.

Here at PWP Web Design we guarantee to get your website listed on the first page of Google, with the ultimate aim of having you above the fold for your chosen keyword or phrase. If you appear anywhere else having a website is pointless.

How we guarantee page 1 natural listing.

There are thousands of businesses wanting to be on page 1 of Google for any given keyword or phrase, so competition is high. In order to guarantee you a page one natural listing our web technicians carry out extensive research into that competition using select keywords. Should that research show that a page 1 natural listing would be extremely difficult and perhaps more importantly very expensive, we would suggest other appropriate keywords, or turn your business down. Our business ethos is to get businesses onto page one, which keeps you delighted because your marketing tool now generates extra revenue for your business and keeps you as a client. The alternatives are just a waste of marketing efforts, budgets and result in high turnover of dissatisfied clients. Please note this is not pay per click advertising.

Think of your website this way.

You have a beautiful car, but it is kept in your garage where no one but you can see it. Or you have 10,000 flyers printed and they all go in the bin, no one gets to read them. Marketing, online or otherwise is only effective if it get seen by your target audience.

This is what we aim to do for you. A simple and effective online marketing tool to drive more customers to your business.

Contact PWP Web Designers and Search Engine Optimisation Experts.

All consultations are free and where possible our field service teams like to conduct meetings face to face.

Please contact Duncan and the team by email: info@pwpwd.co.uk