Imagine a 5 year old boy. Let’s call him Tom.

Tom needs looking after as his mum has to work and you have agreed to help out for a couple of hours after school.

Now, Tom is a typical 5 year old boy. He wants to play football.  He wants to go to the park and climb up trees.  He has been at school all day and yet as enough energy to keep Greater London in power for the month of July.

You, on the other hand, are tired from a hard day of endless phone calls and email bashing.  You would just love to sit down and watch the latest kids DVD together.  After all it looks like rain and you don’t fancy getting wet.

What do you do?  Do you spend the next ten minutes explaining that the wind is picking up and the way that the cumulus nimbus clouds that are forming means that they is a definite probability of heavy precipitation?

Or do you start selling the DVD option?

Whether you have children of your own or not, common sense tells you that when communicating with a 5 year old you need to use simple language and be very clear in your requests.

And this is why I like to compare communicating with potential clients with communicating with children.

If a 5 year old can not grasp the concept of what your business is all about, then there is every chance that your potential client, who knows nothing about you and your business, will not either.

Here are my top tips for treating your clients like children.

1.  Avoid all jargon. There is a big danger that when we live and breathe our businesses, we tend to adopt the language and abbreviations of that business.  This is especially so for technically based businesses and NLP practitioners, for example.

Would you know what web-based CRM interface actually is, let alone know how it could benefit your business?  And how on earth does the average person on the street know how to define neuro-linguistic programming? Or life coaching for that matter?

A quick note on abbreviations – it is just plain rude to assume that your potential customers know what TLA’s are. (answer at the bottom of the article to find out what it means!!)

2.  Use simple language. Using the best part of a Thesaurus on your website home page can look exceptionally pretentious, at the best of times. At worst, if your reader has to pick up a dictionary to understand what you have written, no relationship is going to be built, is it?

3.  Never patronise. Go too simple with your language and your potential customer may take offence to be treated as someone who is one sandwich short of a picnic.  Coming back to Tom – he would certainly take offence to being talked down to and may reward you with a kick in the shins for be treated like a baby!

4.  Avoid using negative language. Tom is carrying a glass of milk across the room and you say to him “Don’t drop the glass”.  What do you think will happen?  Yes, there is every chance that Tom will drop the glass.  Our brains can’t process negatives so we just leave them out.

Think of commonly used phrases such as “Don’t Delay.  Don’t miss out on this special offer”.  Yes, that’s right.  There is a higher chance that your potential client will delay. Far better to use “Book Now.  Reserve your copy today.”

5.  Be very clear in your requests. You would never take Tom to a busy road and just leave him to cross by himself.  You couldn’t afford to take the risk of assuming that he may be street savvy enough to look for cars before crossing.

So, when communicating with your potential customers, whether it is a personal email, an advert or a direct mailing, always be specific with your call to action.

“Call me on 001 234 5678 before Friday at 12 noon if you would like to benefit from this 20% discount”

“Email offer@product.com by the end of the day to reserve your place.”

Never assume your potential customer is going to know what to do.  Be specific and clear and your customer will thank you for making it so easy for them.

5.  Reward with lots of praise and sweets. OK, Tom may be motivated by Smarties and your potential clients may not be.  But use the same principles.  Reward your customers with a simple “Thank you” or “I really appreciate your business” is just as valuable to building relations as continuing discount vouchers and referral rewards.

P.S.  TLA’s is short for Three Letter Acronyms.  Um, annoying isn’t it :0)

Every business should have a website, right?

True.  Every business, big or small, should have some sort of web presence.  The internet is part of every day life and, as you don’t need thousands of pounds to get a business online now, there really is little excuse for a business not to a have a website created at some point.

But my question to you today is whether your website is a help or a hindrance?

Just because you’re online, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doing anything for you.  And worse case scenario is that your website could actually be working against you.

Let’s look at how the average person uses the web.  Did you know that the average time it takes for someone to “read” a website is 3 seconds?

Think back to the last time you used Google to find something.  You may have been looking for the best place to buy toner cartridges for your printer. It could have been that you were trying to find a villa or cottage to rent for your holiday this summer.

Do you remember how long you took to make the decision to hit that back button and go on to the next website on the search results listings?  I am pretty sure it took you less than that average of 3 seconds on the websites that didn’t grab you.

How long would it take for a visitor landing on your home page to make a decision to stay or go?  1 minute?  10 seconds?  Or less than the average 3 seconds?

And imagine if they were on hold to their bank at the time.  Or waiting for a file to download on to their laptop, whilst they click through to your website.  How is your website grabbing their attention?

It could be that your website is being more of a hindrance, than a help!

Here are some of the common “hindrances” that I see every day on websites that don’t generate any leads or new clients for a business.

1. A website that talks about the company and not the potential customer. Look at your home page and for every “We”, “I” and your company name, exchange it for the words “You”, “You” and “You”.  People are only interested in themselves when they are looking for someone to help them. In a previous copy writing article, you can see why it’s all very well explaining you are the market leaders in what you do, but how is that going to benefit your clients?

2. A website that is so obviously “home-made”. You may have gone on a HTML programming course to save yourself a few pennies.  You may have even used your next door neighbour’s son who is studying IT at Uni.  But saving money on your website to end up with a site that doesn’t work in a particular browser or doesn’t display on a mobile phone will only push clients away.  There is really little excuse not to have a nicely designed website. Using blog platforms such as wordpress.org, for example, mean that you can have a simple, professional looking site that works, set up for as little as £500.

3. A website that has a fussy design, clashing colours and is more concerned with how pretty or trendy it looks.  Internet users want to find their information quickly, rather than hunt for it in cleverly worded menus or images.  Flash introductions just annoy – remember the 3 second time limit.  Unless your clients expect to watch a dancing cartoon or slideshow, they will be gone before it’s finished playing!

4.  A website with no obvious purpose. Static brochure style websites just don’t “do” anything.  They may look pretty and give lots of information, but what is that website visitor meant to do?  Picking up the phone and making an enquiry may just be too big a leap to make.  They will more than likely leave and move on to the next site on their search lists.

This last point has to be the one that I rant about the most.  A website with no obvious purpose is a waste of time.  It just floats around in hyperspace, gathering pixel dust and being ignored by by anyone who happens to stumble upon it.

For the majority of small businesses, the most effective purpose to give your website is to help build a database of potential customers.

The competition to be found through search engines is so fierce, you can’t afford to trust that your website visitors will bookmark your site and come back another day.  They will have found what they are looking for by then and you’ll have lost a client.

Having a website whose primary purpose is to invite visitors to leave their name and email address has been proved to be one of the most successful online marketing strategies to have for the majority of small businesses.

It creates the opportunity for you to build a relationship with that visitor so, over time, they trust you enough to become a paying customer.

How do you do this?  Capturing names and email addresses by offering something in return is something so simple and yet so many small business owners don’t do this.  And the easiest way of offering something in return is to offer a free newsletter, a free e-course or free report.  The options available to you are limitless.

You may be keen to start your own email newsletter but feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information out there.  I know I get enough emails asking me about them so if you haven’t started one or in the early stages of creating a database, then do check out my “How To Do Email Newsletters” programme starting this month.

In the meanwhile, start by checking out your website right now.  Ask yourself – is yours a help or a hindrance?

And what are you going to do about it?

How many times have you checked someone out on the internet before meeting them?

Perhaps you are off to a conference or networking event and you’ve checked out the speaker’s credentials before attending.

Some may call it stalking! But for most of you, being able to read someone’s LinkedIn profile or look at their website before picking up the phone to them, is a useful gauge on what this person is all about.  You get to check out what they may stand for, their tone of voice and even a find a picture to see what they look like.

But when was the last time you Googled yourself?

And what did you find when you did?

(Quick Note: When I refer to Google, I am referring to all search engines)

Hopefully Googling your name produced some great results.  Possibly professional looking online profiles, a comprehensive About Us page from your website, half a dozen articles authored by you and perhaps even a link to a photo of you accepting an award the other month.

But what if you find something that you would rather not have others see?

Here are some of the common pitfalls to being found on the web and what you can do to overcome them.

1. Your social life is there for all to see. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are packed full of photos and videos.  And what happens when one of your friends decides to upload photos from last weekend’s party and you get tagged?

Tagging is a process of adding someone’s profile link to the photo, thus allowing this photo to appear in a search of your name – easy to do but perhaps not something you want to be associated with.  If you find anything you don’t want to be associated with, go and un-tag yourself.

2.Business v Social. You use Facebook for friends & family but what happens when a business contact wants to become your friend?  Rather than ignore them or reject them, make use of the privacy settings.   You get to set the privacy settings specific to your needs.

For example, did you know you can update your status and set it so only certain friend lists are able to view it?

3.Your abandoned online profile is ranked higher than your website. Sites such as LinkedIn and Ecademy are ranked very highly by Google because of the size of these sites and the continuous updates and activity.  So it is very likely that your online profiles can appear above a link to your website’s contact page.

And if you are not active on those profiles or, even worse, they are out of date and don’t reflect what your business is all about today, it could sway the judgement of the person who is Googling your name.  If you have an online profile that shows up on the search, make sure it is up to date.

4.You don’t appear anywhere. Ooops! No record of you anywhere on the internet? Perhaps not critical for some businesses, but for the majority of you who read this blog I would expect a link to your website to come up when your name is Googled, at the very least.

Perhaps your name is not mentioned anywhere on your website – a common preference for some businesses who like to promote their “corporate” brand over their “personal” brand.  Unfortunately when using this approach, your name is nowhere to be found so add your name on your website somewhere, even if it is just in the “About Us” page.

5.Too many other John Smiths! A common problem for name Googleability is having a common name.  This is where sites like LinkedIn and Ecademy can really help get your profile ahead of others who share the same name.  Also submitting articles on sites such EzineArticles.com can get you found more easily.

One other consideration is to use a middle name or even a pseudo name – authors and bloggers often do this to help their name be found more easily.

Getting found on the web is not always easy.  But whether you want to be found on the web or not, is immaterial.  Hide yourself away and protect your identity by all means.  But think of your potential clients out there.

How many of them are able to find you?  And if they can’t find you, what do they do?  Do they try a bit harder and find another way of tracking you down – or take the easier option and move on to the next supplier or contact that has been recommended to them?

Let me know what you find when you Google your name!

Quick Note: This is a huge topic and it seemed to get huger, huger (!) as I wrote it – so if there is anything you are not sure of, or I have glossed over a point too much – do get in touch.  Delighted to answer any questions you have.

The past few years have created very exciting marketing opportunities for small business owners.  The ability to get yourself known, both locally and internationally, has been made easier and cheaper than ever before.

The explosion of social media has allowed you to upload videos, publish articles and reach out to potentially thousands of new clients – every day.  And without having to shell out thousands of pounds to do it.

But does that mean traditional marketing, such as printed brochures, face-to-face networking and advertising are things of the past?

Can’t we just ditch all that expensive stuff and put all our energies in to these new, web-tech tools?

It’s tempting isn’t it?

But be tempted and you’ll probably find yourself left with a very quiet business pipeline.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Social media and online marketing techniques can be incredibly effective.  I use tools such as facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because of they do generate great results for me and my business.

But use them in isolation? Absolutely not!

Behind my very visible online presence lies speaking schedules, regular face-to-face networking, newsletters as well as postcard campaigns and word of mouth referrals to name but a few other marketing activities I embrace.

Let me give you a great example of a recent campaign that has taken place over the past couple of months.  Google released its own internet browser, Chrome.  And if there is one company that is synonymous with the internet, it is Google.

Google is dominant in the world of online advertising and it has become a verb, just the way the brand Hoover did all those decades ago.

And yet, when Google launched its new internet browser, did it rely only on the internet?

Absolutely not!

They took out full page spreads in national papers.  They were on billboards up and down the country.  They had posters in and around the underground in London.

They had a full scale, offline advertising campaign going.  And all to spread the word of an internet based product, that could only be used on the internet.

So, it’s not a case of choosing between using social media and traditional methods.  It’s about integrating the two worlds together and making sure your offline world is backing up what you are doing online, and vice versa.

How do you do this?  Here are a few simple suggestions to get started with (and none of which involved a national advertising campaign, you’d be relieved to know!)

• Have your online profiles on your business card, along with your phone number and business address – give people the option of how they want to get in touch with you.
• Arrange to have a coffee meeting with a new contact you “meet” on LinkedIn – get to really know your online network.
• Have your phone number listed on your website, blog and social networking profiles – make it easy for people to speak to you, rather than be forced to message you electronically all the time.
• Pick up the phone to someone rather than send them a message online – it’s amazing how these conversations can go!
• Follow up the people you’ve met at a networking event and search for them on LinkedIn – get connected online with the people you meet offline.
• Use postcards to promote your facebook page or LinkedIn group to encourage more people to visit and sign up – don’t just rely on those automatic email invitations that seemed to get ignored most of the time.

These are just a few ideas to get you going and very few of them need any cash to follow them through.  So, don’t get caught up with the sparkles and glitz of social media and ignore your offline strategies.

The more you can integrate your social media marketing with your traditional marketing, the more effective it will be.

Most business owners find it incredibly difficult to put down in words why they are so great to work with.  Writing can be one of the most challenging skills to learn and master and it’s certainly not high on the list when you first start out.

All the focus in the first few months is around financing, cash flows, business planning and marketing strategy.  But one of the most beneficial skills to have as a business owner is often the written word.

Contracting writing out to copywriters can be expensive and often time-consuming. So when small business owners decide to get on with the writing themselves, without thinking about how to write effectively, they are can be costing themselves dearly.

And writing copy for your brochure, your website and your blog all need different styles and approaches.

Let’s take them one by one.

Writing for your brochure. Your brochure and leaflets are going to be printed so design and layout can be just as important considerations as the words you write.  Your headline needs to be eye-catching and stop readers in their tracks.  This is the time to be selling, to be focusing on what problem the potential client has and how you can make it all better.

Your style has to be strong, punchy and to the point as you’ve usually got limited space.  But you’ve also got to get all the facts in to enable your potential client to make a decision.

Writing for your website. Again, this is the time to be selling.  But just because you may have unlimited space and pages, doesn’t mean you can ramble on aimlessly.

Strong headlines are essential.  Use questions to stop your online visitor in their tracks quickly (you’ve got less than a second to make an impact!)  And sharp, clear benefit-driven copy to outline how it is you may be the answer to your potential client’s problems.

People read differently on a screen than they do from print so use short sentences, 2 to 3 word paragraphs and bullet points where appropriate.

Writing for your blog. Whilst your brochure and website is there to sell your business, your blog is there is to build relationships.  It is here you need to stop selling and focus on giving value, content and useful information.

Your blog is place to showcase your expertise, to share tips and ideas with your readers and build up a useful resource for potential clients to come back to again and again.

Your blog is one of the doorways to your business so welcome your readers and invite them to check out what is inside, linking relevant pages to your website where the selling can take place.  If you try to sell hard at the doorstep, your potential client won’t think about crossing the threshold.

So when thinking about writing, consider the different platforms for your writing.  Know when to sell and when to give value.  And a blog is place where you will sell more but selling less!

What have you done differently in your brochure, website and blog copy writing?

Biggest website mistake?  It’s when business owners spend all their time and energy on making sure the look and feel is right and then try to bash out some copy quickly so that they can make their website go live.

Absolutely, first impressions do count.  A picture is worth a thousand words and finding a website designer who understands how some colours have better impact online than others will undoubtedly help the success of your website.

But if you spend no more than a few hours writing up 5 pages of website copy, then all your lovely images, beautiful branding and snazzy colours will be wasted.

If the words don’t back up your branding and speak your clients’ language, your potential clients will be clicking the back button as quickly as they can blink.

Last year I published an article on my blog asking the question “Do Long Sales Letters Work?”  And it certainly evoked many comments and thoughts from readers.  But putting the long sales letter formula aside for the moment, there are some essential copy writing points to follow if you want your potential clients to take the next step with you via your website.

1.    It’s never about you but always about your clients. Avoid the trap of writing about yourself and your business because ultimately your potential clients will only care about what’s in it for them.

So what if you are the market leaders in your region – what does that mean to your client?  So what if you have worked with all the big names – how does that benefit your client?  Don’t list the reasons why you are so great.  Focus on the benefits to your clients.

2.    Stop writing “we” and start writing “you”. Print out your home page copy and highlight every “we”, “our” and reference to your business name.  Then highlight every “you” in a different colour.  There should be 5 times as many “you”s as there are “we”s – but you’ll probably find the opposite!

For every sentence that has a “we” or a “our” in it, re-write it and change the reference to a “you” and you’ll be on the right track to having copy that engages with your potential client, rather than turns them off.

3.    Speak your client’s language – not your own. It’s easy to use industry standard pre-fixes and jargon in website copy.  After all, you probably use these words every day when you talk to colleagues or suppliers.  But your clients probably don’t!  Use words they wouldn’t understand and you’ll end up alienating them at worst or coming across too corporate at best.

4.    Correct grammar of course, but don’t be afraid of writing colloquially. If your potential clients use informal language, then embrace it.  If they use slang, embrace it too.

Over the years, I have had the odd email from a subscriber pointing out my occasional spelling mistakes and bad grammar.  But for most of you, the feedback has been that you’ve enjoyed my natural “speaking” style – I write how I talk.  If it works for your potential clients, then use it!

5.    Use short paragraphs, bullet points and selective bolding. Reading from a screen is different from reading the printed page.  People tend to scan and often don’t read word for word.

Make it easier for your online visitor to digest your words by using one to three sentence paragraphs.  Break it up with bullet points where appropriate.  And use the bold selectively (too much & it defeats the object!).

6.    To create action you need to demonstrate pain. Your potential client will only contact you if they find themselves in enough pain.  Whether that’s confusion and lose of direction or losing profitability and sales – if there’s no pain, why would they spend money with you to solve a problem they don’t have?

To identify a reason to contact you, they need to identify with the problems you highlight in your website copy.  So don’t just write warm, fuzzy words all of the time.  You need to hit them between the eyes to create enough reason for them to send you an email or pick up the phone to you.

Writing website copy that sells is not easy.  But it is skill that can be developed over time with lots of practice and lots of learning.

Keep going back to your website copy once a month and review what you have written.  Read up about copy writing and get in to the habit of writing on a regular basis.  It is really worth the time and energy because to have a website that sells your business to potential clients is a business resource worth having – guaranteed!

Got a comment to add?

What tips and suggestions have you got? Or perhaps you have a question you want answering?  Leave your comments below

When was the last time you Googled yourself?

I was asking around a few months ago for some personal recommendations of a business coach/mentor.  One guy came highly recommended from someone who was working with him at present and I was given his name and contact details.

I always like to check someone out online before phoning them to see for myself how they represent themselves.  So I eagerly put his name in to Google.

He didn’t have a website, which was a little disappointing as I felt that I needed to work with someone who marketed themselves online.  But I decided to have a further look, as he was recommended.

There was a linked-in profile, but not up to date.  There was the odd reference on Ecademy but that was all.  Then on page 2 on his Google search I found a link to his Christmas letter which he obviously sent out via link to a webpage.  Not only could I read his Christmas letter, I could read the past 6 year letters in all their glory – photos, personal references, the full works.

A quick scan and I realised that he wasn’t to be the right personality fit with me.

What is the moral of this story?  Check yourself out on Google today and see what comes back.  You may not be able to control everything that you find and yes, there may be other people out there with the same name.  But if someone out there was to Google you, what would they find out about you and your business?

It’s worth a look!

Got a comment to add? I would love to read your thoughts and ideas.

It can be expected that everything you do in your business, you want done right.  To have the correct grammar and spelling.  To have the right message and images in your marketing material.  TO have the your logo in the right corner of your invoice.

After all you have standards and the right business image to create.

But to strive for perfection is business suicide.

Perfection means that everything has to be just right.  And to be just right it can take weeks, if not months, of checking and checking again.

Running your own business means that you can’t afford weeks of indecision and making the smallest of corrections before launching a new product or service.

Actions need to be taken for you to move forward.  Projects need completing for results to be seen.  And you can’t find out what is and what isn’t going to work until the results come in.

So if you are a perfectionist and are waiting for a final check before you launch that website, send out that email, speak to that client – just remember the completion not perfection rule.

Take action and do!

What are your thoughts? Do you find yourself putting off project launches because you want everything “just right”? Leave your comment below

Websites are often something that sits on your to-do-list, waiting to be ticked off.

You spend a few sessions with a web designer or graphic designer, write your copy and get it published.  Tah-Dah! It’s live. Your website is complete!

But actually your website work has only just begun.  A website is NOT something that just gets ticked off from your marketing list.  A website is actually an evolving tool which needs to be nurtured, cared for and grown to keep up with your business.

One of 1-2-1 clients was getting very frustrated with her new website the other week.  She had decided to set one up using www.mrsite.com [a great way of getting a very affordable, user-friendly website up and running very quickly].  But after a week of playing around with different templates and writing copy for her 5 pages, she was pulling her hair out.

I shouted “Move away from the website!!!”  It was time to take a break and stop trying to make it perfect.

My advice to her was to leave her website alone for a week and then come back to it for an hour or two every week over the next month or so. No more, no less.  The site was working, the right pages were up, people where able to book a place on the workshop she was launching – but to keep fiddling to make it perfect before “launching” was just driving her nuts!

You see, a website should never be finished.  When you run your own business, you are probably evolving and growing at a rate of knots.  You start working with clients you hadn’t thought possible, you create products and partnerships you hadn’t quite planned for.  You are being flexible to meet the needs and demands of your clients [or you should be!].

And your website has to reflect this.  It’s not a corporate brochure that once printed, has to be thrown out when out of date.  It’s moving and evolving marketing tool that you need to be reviewing at least once a month. 

Have you finished your website, yet?  Good – so you shouldn’t have!

It is easy to get caught in the hype of all the online marketing.  With the number of internet marketing programs you can buy into, it’s easy to feel that by having 20,000 followers on Twitter and 5,000 friends on Facebook, these are the reasons behind building a successful business. 

But behind every successful online presence there is usually a very successful offline one first.  The two go hand-in-hand.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Building an online presence is important and, in fact, integral to many small business owners, particularly those of you who sell services and their time on a 1-2-1 basis.

But when someone meets you face-to-face and your online presence it is not backing up the online presence – is not congruent to what they’re expecting – everything you have built online will just crumble instantly.

So when building an online strategy, never ever forget the power of networking, the power of standing up and speaking at events, the simple act of handing a business card to someone physically.

Always remember that behind every successful online presence there is usually a highly successful offline one too.