Lifetime Value and how to works it out for Marketing Purposes

It’s Duncan from PWP Web Design and after going on a marketing course recently, I thought I could pass on some of the things I picked up on. Marketing is my business, that’s to say marketing other people businesses is my business. This is why I absorb as much information as I can.

Let’s say you would love to start attracting new clientèle to your hair salon. There are lots of steps you can take to heighten the effectiveness of any campaign. The aspect we shall be looking at today is “life time value”. Do you know the lifetime value of your clients? If you don’t then how do you know how much to invest in order to make it worthwhile to attract them in the first place?

In this example we are using hairdressers, one because they were used on my marketing course and two my business partner David was an ex-hairdresser. You can of course substitute your own data to work out the lifetime value of your clients by asking yourself these questions.

·         What is your customers average spend?

·         How many times do they visit you, per year?

·         How long are they loyal to you?

LET’S WORK SOME FIGURES OUT:    

·         Average spend is £50

·         They visit 6 times per year

·         They stay loyal for an average of 5 years

Remember these are figures for hairdressers, your business will vary.

Now that we have these figures we can work out each customer’s life time value:

£50 x 6 x 5 = £300 x 5, = £1,500

Now you are in a very powerful position! If you know how many customers are on your books you can calculate a good idea of your turnover this year? Each customer being worth £300 per year. You can also work out how many more customers you need in order to reach your 3 year or 5 year goals. You can also work out which form of marketing or advertising will work well for you.

Let’s assume you know a really good online marketing company (you know who) are regularly getting other businesses like yours 12 new clients a year.

Those 12 new clients visit the salon every 8 weeks over the year, spending an average of £50 each visit:

That’s 6 visits per year for each new client (£300) multiply by 12

 = £3,600 of new business per year. Or x 5 = £18,000 over their loyalty lifetime!

WHAT IS THE INVESTMENT WHICH GETS YOU £18,000?    

Our research figures show Flexiads at £59 per month x 12 for the year = £708

£18,000 as return on investment of £708 as percentage is + 2,542%

WHAT THIS MEANS:

If you can answer these questions:

·         What is your customers average spend?

·         How many times do they visit you, per year?

·         How long are they loyal to you?

AND you have a good idea of the conversion rate of each marketing strategy.

FURTHER ADVICE:

There is a great blog on the life time value of customers – CLICK HERE

More information on PWP’s Flexiads – CLICK HERE

UK Marketing Magazine – CLICK HERE

About the author:

Duncan Malloch is an entrepreneur from the UK with specialism’s in online marketing, website design, search engine optimization and coaching. 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

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

One way to Improve Your Website Bounce Rates

What is bounce rate:

According to Google analytics, “bounce rate is the percentage of visits that go to only one page before exiting a site.”

Factors that influence bounce rates:

Improve Website Bounce Rate

If you stop and have a think about it there are just a few reasons why someone visiting your website would hit the back button, rather than browse more pages.

·         Your website does not contain what they are looking for.

·         They believe your website does not contain what they are looking for.

·         Page load times are too long.

·         Your website is designed in a way they cannot see it properly, like some flash sites.

Any website designer worth their salt could quickly design out the last two items on the list. If your website is about dry cleaning and the browser was looking for wet suits, there is nothing you can do. So, this only leaves one way to improve your website bounce rates. You have to convince people coming to your site that it contains exactly what they are looking for. How can you do this?

Compelling website visitors to stay:

Recent research by business coaches and marketing analysts says that you need a statement at the very top of each page that engages with people browsing it. This statement is not your business name, nor is it your profession. I call it a descriptive marketing statement where you are selling the sizzle not the steak. In other words this is matching the benefits of your product or service with the needs of your target audience.

A cleaner might say – “we don’t cut corners we clean them - thoroughly”

An Engine Tuner– “save money on fuel and gain extra performance”

A photographer – “a lifetime of beautiful memories, captured forever”

How to double the effectiveness of descriptive marketing statements:

Your website visitors have to be subtly led if you want to increase the effectiveness of your descriptive marketing statements. We do this by linking them with strong calls to action. A call to action simply tells your visitors what you want them to do. “Click here for latest offers”, “ Call now to reserve your place”, “download your free diet plan here” .

We all live our lives at a thousand miles an hour and know what we want and if we can’t find it we move on. Or click back! This is why on every single page you should have a descriptive marketing statement in pride of place at the very top of the page. Research suggests that if you can fit in other statements and calls to action, the visitors to your website are more likely to stay longer. The longer they stay the more likely they are to become a customer.

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

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

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

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