January is a quiet month for some businesses. Why not give your website a healthcheck if you have a spare hour?  Take a critical look at your website as if you were visiting it for the first time:

• Does it still reflect what your business does and how it does it?
• Has your customer base changed and would the website appeal to them?
• Have your products and prices changed?
• Is the information on your website still relevant?
• Are all the links to other sites still working? Are there any you should be adding now?
• Are the colours and design dated?  The design template and colours can be changed easily on Create.net, just at the touch of a button.

And there may be some features you could add now:

• How about a blog to tell your customers about your expertise or knowledge in a particular product or service?
• Is it time to set up an on-line shop? Or a search facility?

Or does all of this involve too much staring at the computer? If you would like to chat to us about how your business has changed and whether any changes to your website are appropriate, we would be delighted to check it and write you a comprehensive report of suggested changes, hints and tips tailored to your needs.

Fee: £50 (refundable against any future work on your internet marketing).

Contact us.

Are you doing the most to attract more customers to your business? Are you confused by marketing? You may be constantly thinking of marketing ideas as you do your work, but many people are too busy doing the actual work itself. An independent external perspective from time to time can be beneficial to improve your slice of your market.

What are the elements of a successful marketing strategy?

Customer definition

Defining and knowing who is in your customer base - who typically will buy your products or services and why?    Making your promotional material attractive to your typical customers.  Undertaking market research to assess the numbers of potential customers and to determine their requirements.

Branding

Defining what values you or your business represent.  E.g. Are you cheap and cheerful, or premium and luxury, or efficient and friendly? What words do you want potential customers to think of when they think of your products and services?  Your promotional material should feature these qualities.

Product definition

Making sure your products and services are what your potential customers want to purchase.  Highlighting their features and benefits to make them attractive.

Pricing

Setting prices that your potential customer will be prepared to pay.  Highlighting the features of your products and services that make their costs worthwhile to potential customers.

Competition defintion

Comparing your products and services with those of your competitors.  Making them subtly or definitively different to be more attractive than your competitors'. What offers can be effective in encouraging people to choose you?

Promotion

Last but not least, promoting the features and benefits of your attractive products and services to your potential customers where they are likely to find your attractively designed messages and encourage them to contact you.  Determining which media are more likely to reach your potential customers e.g. - printed leaflets, TV radio, newspapers, website, email newsletters, blogs, social media.

As you can see there are many elements to think of when reviewing how you market your business, many of them inter-related.

Are you doing enough on your marketing strategy ?  Need an independent and focussed review?

Have a two-hour marketing strategy session with me for £85 and walk away with strategies and suggestions focussed to help you attract more relevant customers.  Call 0118 377 5819 or email to speak to me today!

I was wondering today how to make a small symbol representing my website appear in the tab.  Apparently it is called a 'favicon' - a conglomerate of the words 'favourite' and 'icon' - you will notice that small symbols for well known websites such as Facebook appears against their name in your favourites list.

So I checked the Help and Support section of create.net and helpfully and supportively they explained that I could make one using a website such as www.favicon.co.uk and load it as a favicon.ico file for my website.   So I used favicon.co.uk to upload my logo and make a little 'F' symbol as a favicon.ico file, uploaded this to my create.net account and republished my website.  They say it will take a while to appear, but when it is I will publish this blog.

Another tip to get your brand noticed.

Do you have a new website? A good way to let everyone know about it (and drive traffic to it) is to link to it in every email that you send.  You don't have to remember to do this every time you send an email, you can set up a signature which displays in every new email you create.

In Google Mail the signature box is in Settings (top left of the screen) and half way down the General tab.

In Outlook create a new email message, press 'Insert' then 'Signature', then 'Signatures'

We suggest you write your name, business name, telephone numbers, website name and any strapline. Remember to highlight and link your website name to its website address so that people can click straight through and have a look.

It may take a few minutes to set up but it's easy from them on!