In the last few years blogging has taken the web by storm. But what is a blog…? What’s it really for?

Blog is an abbreviation of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe part of a website that maintains an ongoing chronicle of information and a way of sharing your knowledge, information, hints and tips. It’s a fabulous way for you to build a following of people you want to forge a relationship with.

It’s generally written content, but could even be a video or audio blog.

A blog is a great forum for you to share your knowledge, expertise and to rise above the crowd. My blog for example is all geared to helping people boost their sales through effective marketing – what would yours be about?

I consider blogging as an essential ingredient to any social media and general sales and marketing strategy nowadays. Are you unsure about what to write, when to post, how to grow your subscribers and how to keep them coming back for more? Don’t worry, you’re not alone!

The first step in that process of course is to know why you’re blogging. This sounds simple, but it’s amazing how many bloggers aren’t clear on the core rationale behind their blog initiative. There are too many people just writing for the sake of it.

As I see it, you have 3 principle reasons to blog

1. Blogging for Content

This is where you are writing a blog with the emphasis on search engine optimization, (being found by search engines), attempting to drive traffic to the blog and website via the inclusion of “keywords” for your business, products or services.

2. Blogging for Sales Leads

Still related to the first, but lead-oriented blogs are more interested in capturing visitors details for marketing purposes rather than in traffic generation. You send traffic from the blog to another web landing page, and an auto responder to collect data.

3. Blogging for Community Engagement

These blogs seek to build a consistent readership that interacts with the blogger and people who will eagerly share the blog posts with others helping you build your community of followers and prospects, maybe on social media sites like Facebook too.

Ideally and in all the businesses I help with their sales and marketing – I’d encourage all three ingredients to be worked into every blog post – without any oversell.

Google loves fresh content – so get into the habit of blogging regularly which in turn produces fresh and relevant content for your site.

Gather your top 20 keywords or phrases and write blog posts specific to each one. Keywords are in essence the main words people use then they type in on Google to look for what you offer. You can outsource all of this if you don’t have the time or skill set – ask me for recommendations.

Keep the content compelling, but be sure to sprinkle the selected keywords throughout the post. The important thing to keep in mind is that these posts are human readable, but keyword rich. To learn more email steve@eurekasales.co.uk

We do this and we do that… You need to understand and accept that no one is really interested in you or your products. That’s OK, take a deep breath and let me explain what I mean.

Most human beings are only interested in “what’s in it for me”. Someone once explained this to me by saying that people are tuned into radio WII-FM, that’s: What’s In It For Me. I’ve never forgotten it since, I hope you don’t either.

Review all your sales copy, including your website, in fact, particularly your website, as it’s often one of the most prevalent “we” areas. “We” do this… “We” have been around since… “We” have the greatest…etc. etc. Get over yourselves – people don’t care!

What’s in it for me? So what that you’ve been in business 25 years? What does that mean to me? If there’s no tangible benefit to the customer, don’t mention it – sorry, but they just don’t care, not yet.

Think about where you can chan ge “we and our” for “you or your” – talk about and to your customers, not about you and your business.

And whatever you do… stop “feature bashing” and focus on benefits.

People purchase based on the benefits to them. What will they get from your product or service? How will they feel, what will they save and so on?

You have probably heard this before, but people don’t by features, they buy benefits.

All too often business owners waste time, effort, and money pushing feature after feature of their product or service and…you guessed it, the potential customers just don’t care. They are trying to work out… WIIFM – so tell them!

Take a look at your collateral materials and your website. If you’re a “feature basher”, your work consists of flyers, leaflets, ads, and a website, all of which have your logo and company name, a list of things you do or the “features” of your products and your phone number. Are you surprised that no one cares enough to respond?

What do you blame the lack of sales on? Your competition, cheaper pricing, the government, a rise in VAT…? Sorry, they’re all just excuses.

You may be right in one respect… They don’t want you or your products: but they do want to know what you and your products or service can do for them!

This is often very difficult for many people to get to grips with. In my Marketing Master Classes we work through numerous practical exercises to help you put all of this into practice until its second nature to you.

Here’s a very simple method of uncovering the benefit over the feature of your product or service. List one of your features; let’s say it’s a low emissions car… a feature of the car is that it has low emissions. Now say “which means that…” and the next thing out of your mouth is a benefit…

Why not stop making excuses about your sales being down and join me on one of my Master Classes.  Can’t make it person? No excuse these are available as a DVD/CD set too!

I was listening recently to a fascinating business speaker, Grant Leboff, as he explained that when Barak Obama was campaigning for the presidency he talked repeatedly about the necessity for change. Yet by the time he assumed office in January 2009 the world of business had already changed – dramatically.

Back in 1990 – a London born computer scientist by the name of Tim Burners-Lee implemented the first successful thread of the World Wide Web and the internet was born. As a result, the biggest change we’ve seen since the industrial revolution occurred during Bill Clinton’s time as President between 1993 and 2001.

When Clinton came to office there were just over 600 websites around the world, by the time he stepped down in 2001 there were over 36 million websites around the globe and business, in particular the way we need to market our products and services, had changed forever.

Cast your minds back – if you can and if you’re too young to remember, ask your mum or dad… When we watched the equivalent of today’s ‘The X Factor’ (Opportunity Knocks) or the equivalent of ‘I’m a Celebrity,,,’ (3-2-1 and Dusty Bin), we had little alternative to Saturday night TV entertainment. We only had four channels to choose from. We had to watch it whilst it was live. The majority of TV sets didn’t even have a remote control… imagine!

With viewing numbers for these shows hitting 18 million on a Saturday night it was an advertising company’s dream come true. Companies could buy their time and shout their messages to the masses. What were the alternatives?

We can now record any one of hundreds of channels. We can pause live TV. We can watch programs on our laptops when we want to and catch up on anything we missed over the internet. What do we do when the adverts come on?… Fast forward!

You can’t just keep SHOUTING your sales messages the old fashioned way and hope to be heard above the noise, and I mean shouting in any form of advertising. You need to be finding new ways of engaging with your clients and prospects.

We used to measure results of marketing based on a R.O.I. (Return On Investment). I’d suggest a better measure today would be an R.O.E. (Return on Engagement). Focus on building your contact database and building relationships.

You need to find new ways to engage with more people and hold their attention. Let people get to know you and trust you – that way, when they’re ready to buy – they come to you and ask for what you have on offer.

How do you do this? You need to focus on your niche. Be the expert in your field. Share your knowledge and information freely. Don’t get too hung up on the idea of security on the web. I know too many people that practice “security by obscurity”. You need to be noticed and you need to be attractive.

The switch to blogging from flogging makes so much sense. It’s how you share your knowledge and allow people to get to know you, trust you and buy from you.

If you need more help or advice or have a question about how to integrate blogging into your business or what to blog about email me steve@eurekasales.co.uk or call me on 0845 053 4937

There was a well known saying, “Half my advertising works and half doesn’t, but I just don’t know which is which”.

And back in 1930 or whenever this quote was first used, it was quite true. However, times have moved on and this just doesn’t have to be true any more.

It’s easy to get a pretty good handle on most, if not all, of your advertising and marketing just through using Tracking Numbers…

Tracking Numbers is simply a service that allows you to track and monitor how many telephone calls you receive from each individual advert or piece of marketing that you do.

How’s does it work?

You acquire a set of new different phone numbers from a broker, there are several in the uk – and you point them all at your existing phone line. Don’t get hung up, (pardon the pun) on the technicalities, it’s really easy to do and you don’t need to change lines or providers and your existing numbers work just the same.

The only difference is that now you know which advert or piece of marketing generated each call as they all have a unique phone number. This means that you can go online and see exactly how many calls you’ve received on which phone number.

Here’s a really simple example;

Let’s say you run a gardening business. You have an ad in Yellow Pages, plus ads in two other local publications, you have a website that you drive traffic to via Pay Per Click, you have a flyer and also cards that you distribute.

That’s 6 separate pieces of marketing:

1. Yellow Pages (OK maybe not, just an example)
2. Parish Mag
3. Local Paper
4. Website
5. Flyer
6. Cards

How do you know which one produces the most inquiries? Which ones to continue and which ones to dump?

You buy 6 separate phone numbers – all local numbers and allocate one phone number to each stream of marketing. Then I’ll know for sure, over time, exactly which bits of marketing are working best for me.

You don’t need 6 new telephones these all ring on the usual phone line, you just get to track results automatically… in the voice of a meerkat… Schimples.

Seriously, it works like a dream – and it’s one of the most under-used tools available to businesses in the UK. It costs just a few pounds to set up and next to nothing to run. Yet it puts you in control and lets you test and measure your marketing effectively.

Oh, and there’s are additional benefits too. this type of system will also tell you how many calls you failed to answer. Just imagine that! You’ve purchased an ad, a potential customer has seen it, called you up…but nobody picks up the phone.

You’ll know exactly how many calls you’re not answering, that could prove invaluable. Stop losing customers and find an answering service that will take your calls 24/7. Mine calls are all answered – and I only pay for that service when they take a call!

If you’d like more information about these types of services just call me on 0845 056 3911 – the call will always be answered by a real person any time of day or night… and I’ll know it was because of this article – go on test it out.