So how can you make money through a blog?

Think of your blog as another platform to advertise from. Call it promoting yourself, your product and your company. But you could write endless posts providing valuable insights and top tips about your business, and even though they would be interesting reading, they are missing a vital element.

Don’t forget to post with a purpose. Is there a motive for your blogging? As well as providing something of value, guide your readers to your website, especially specific pages of your website that relate to the subject of your posts, where they can find more information.

Blogging without a focus will not make money. Structure your posts into a series, culminating into a purpose, promotion, event or special deal. Get your readers to do something in return for all this wonderful information you’ve given them!

Just like advertising, take advantage of your post’s purpose and include a call to action. Make it incentive-laden and time-dependent, with clear links or buttons to enable your readers to sign up for more information or see where to pay.

Guide your readers to specific landing pages, or squeeze pages, on your website, which must be relevant to your blog posts. There you can convert your customers into achieving a sale or signing up to an event. You could also provide special codes to particular readers to gain access to protected squeeze pages in exchange for their email addresses, and then use these permission based details to send focused communications for specific projects culminating in a sale.

Use the advantages of a blog to write varied posts with alternative persuasive text in order to attract different audiences to your squeeze pages, so you can increase your customer base. And the practicality of RSS will feed these posts to various social networking sites, giving you access to different kinds of customers.

Ask your friends through social networking either to respond favourably, recommend, forward on or retweet your promotion to increase your exposure. Test and measure to find out which posts work on specific target markets, so you can improve your next marketing campaign.

Remember marketing works with multiple messages driven home over a period of time. Communicate your expertise to a wider audience to achieve recognition, as it takes anything from 7-21 times to get results. Hence why it’s good to blog frequently in order to promote your business in as many different ways as possible.

Want to know more? Read the blogging pages to find out more, and sign up to my blogging newsletter to keep yourself in the loop.

How to use your customers to promote your business

Customers are extremely important to your business, where would it be without them? This may sound obvious, but there are some businesses that trundle along taking no notice of this vital element.

When analysing a business promotion, take notice of to whom they are talking to. Who is the main objective in their marketing message? Who is placed at the top of their advertising? Who are they describing when they talk about their services or products? Who is first, the company or the customer?

Humans are naturally self-centred; it’s in our nature to look after ‘number one’. But for business purposes this needs to be turned on its head: you need to think about who you are selling to, rather than banging on about how great you are. Customers don’t give a tinker’s toot about your business, they only care about what’s in it for them. How are they going to benefit from your product or services? Will their lives be improved, and by how much? Will they get value for money?

This concept should be prevalent in all your visual marketing: website, promotional literature, advertising, shop front, merchandise, networking: pitch, presentation and social on-line, sales patter with your customers – in fact any visual outlet of your company. The customer always comes first, as it is they you are promoting to, and it is they who will ultimately buy.

Another factor to take notice of is time. Don’t go mad trying to explain everything, especially if it’s really dull stuff about your company. The 21st century is a fast moving world; customers won’t (or even can’t) spend time reading cluttered and over-long descriptions; they usually make split-second decisions and can be very cruel if it doesn’t match their requirements.

For example, visitors to your website usually spend up to eight seconds to make up their mind whether it the right one, what they can do (go further in, click on something, sign up for a newsletter or download a free report) or just decide to disappear. Your leaflets have even less time to make an impression as to whether they are picked up or discarded: is this relevant to me, does it have the information I want, do I understand all of it, what’s in it for me, who do I contact to find out more?

OK, customers are self-centred, but they are also greedy. You may have got an idea of this from the website reference above. If there is something they can get for nothing, they will have it. Take advantage, and offer an exchange of their details in return for something they want, is of value, is relevant and will benefit them. You now have their details in a secure database for future communication; they are now at your mercy to be promoted at! And customers like being kept in touch, especially if they will have first hand knowledge of any new promotions and can benefit from early-bird discounts!

Use your customers’ opinions, comments and feedback. Write a questionnaire to find out more about their wants and needs. Encourage them to respond to your blog posts, tweets, social networking walls, on-line articles, events and workshops, teleseminars or whatever, and use this incredible source of information to find out how you can make your business even better for them. If customers feel they are appreciated, empathised with, understood and you are willing to adapt for their gain, then they will come back for more, tell their friends, spread the news and even provide testimonials and references (I have a great referral postcard designed specifically for this).

Do they waste so much on marketing?

Sometimes it astounds me how much companies are prepared to spend in order to ‘market’ their products or services.

I usually enjoy getting packages through the post, especially when I know I’ve ordered something, like a book I’ve been recommended or a new gadget, and our postwoman rang the bell this morning to give me a surprise package. But it turned out to be a business card box containing one business card and a toffee rattling around in it from a printer who was touting his wares.

Eh? Another cryptic stance at some marketing which doesn’t ring home. I didn’t recognise the name, so this kind gesture was lost on me, though it did raise a smile. What a waste of postage and jiffy bag (though a good box for me to put bits in). Was I supposed to ‘feel’ the card and appreciate the ‘quality’ of the printing, but then don’t they all have that?

The other day we had a full set of Next Directory catalogues left outside our house. My daughter was delighted, but we hadn’t got a clue who they were meant for, the most likely recipient having moved away. We are amazed at a) how many hardback catalogues there were, b) the weight of the numerous pages, c) the sumptuous print quality and d) the cost of postage! We also wondered if Next really managed to recouperate the cost of producing these luxury products from its directory subscribers at such an obvious outlay. I knew someone who was involved in maintaining the quality production of these volumes, and it was not taken lightly.

Staples also provides another communication to plop onto our doormat. This arrives in various forms, from a very thin 16 page magazine to a fully binded catalogue. OK, the production certainly isn’t as high quality as the Next Directories, but the frequency is astounding (and noted they do use some clever marketing and upselling tactics), which again leads us to wonder if all this production actually makes it worth while? Obviously, or they wouldn’t be doing it – would they?

The purpose of this post is to question whether these companies calculate that their activity is successful in bringing in enough sales to make it worth while. What I mean is, does the quality of the Next Directories guarantee more purchasing power from its subscribers, or the frequency of the Staples magazines jolt more positive responses? And because these established businesses are doing it, and giving the impression that it works, is it the right thing to do for your business?

My reply is ‘no’, because unless you have an established name like Next or Staples, it would be a waste of money and effort. It is much better to market your organisation through relationship and expertise building, providing value and good advice to exactly the right target market at exactly the right place and time. This may be slow at first, but if you can maintain a good base of satisfied customers, ask for referrals and other viral marketing tactics, broadcast your successes and valuable tips where many can see them, publicise snippets of what you can do on social networking, and create a thoroughly interactive website used in conjunction with focused promotion campaigns, then you can market your business without wasting money.

It’s not always a good idea to do it yourself

I remember when we decided to redecorate our son’s room with a laminate floor. I thought I could try and lay the floor myself to save my husband the bother. How easy could it be? The slats easily locked together and I could get the majority done before collecting the kids from school.

How wrong I was. For four hours I struggled even to begin the first layer. My comments were not repeatable and I achieved absolutely nothing. On his return my husband took one look at my efforts, lined up the pieces against the wall, and in four minutes had completed a couple of layers. What? This was not fair!

I related this episode to a floor specialist I met with the other day as an anecdote. I explained it’s not worth struggling to do something you don’t know anything about, and I know nothing about laying floors, that was his speciality. ‘How does this relate to me?’ the floor specialist asked.

I looked at the advert he had given me to scrutinise. He had been complaining that, although it had cost a lot of money to produce and place, it had brought in no returns. It consisted of sumptuous pictures of beautiful floors above his logo and contact details, even if they were a bit small. It was certainly well designed and was appropriate for the kind of magazine it had been placed into.

‘But what have you asked your customers to do?’ I replied.

‘Err… I don’t know.’

‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘It’s all very well giving them something attractive to look at, they will treat it the same as all the other pages in the magazine, think it’s very nice and then turn over. You need to tell them to take action! Even if it’s just to call you!’

This is a common fault in adverts and leaflet campaigns. Never assume your readers will understand what you want them to do. Just because there’s a telephone number or webaddress it doesn’t mean they will actually take the initiative.

Play on your customers’ natural self centeredness and greed. Offer them something of value, such as a discount, free sample or whatever, if they make contact. Give them a specific time to accomplish this by, or they will forget, get distracted or find a better offer elsewhere. Even by just commanding they phone you: ‘Contact us NOW to find out more!’ will have a better result that saying nothing.

So if you want to get good results in anything, it’s best to ask somebody who knows what they are doing, and that includes laying laminate floors.

The world continues without me

I’m in the midst of suffering from influenza aggravated by bronchitis. No, I don’t want sympathy, but I would like to say it is really boring.

The problem is I’m concerned I haven’t been unable to fulfil my clients requirements, not to mention a really big project I wanted to get ready before the end of February. But hey ho, nature always has the upper hand and there is nothing I can do.

Nevertheless, the world continues without me. Businesses still do business, marketing, selling, social networking, promoting events, forming strategic alliances, holding meetings, developing new ideas…

Luckily with today’s technology you can watch from the sidelines what is going on, even if you are unable to participate. That’s what marketing on-line is all about: everybody is busy telling everybody else all about what they are doing, thinking, have found out, recommending, researching into, organising, planning, creating, promoting. And good job too, wouldn’t the world be a very dull place if we didn’t do all of this: learning, appreciating, listening, understanding, contributing, assessing, responding?

So let’s revel in the 21st century and applaud how we are so expert at communicating with each other.

Adapt your products, not your customers

In these difficult times, it isn’t easy to get your customers to keep on buying. So you must change for the better.

First, analyse the product that sells the best. Find out why, which attributes are so popular, what aspect appeals to encourage a sale, and how does this product benefit your customers, what value is it to them and what is it that they want the most.

Once this has been accomplished, whether by going through your records, doing research, collecting questionnaires or whatever, then you must adapt your other products to suit. Obviously your popular product is selling, so the others must gain similar attributes to do the same.

Another tip: you could use your most successful product as bait to get your customers across your threshold. Once captured, you are then in a better position to educate, offer, seduce, cajole your customers into becoming aware of what else you have to sell, it all depends on your patter, the value of your products and any savings that can be made.

If your product isn’t doing terribly well, look at your competition. What are they doing right? Or are they really, and can you do better? Consider the environment, season, economics, trends, news that could influence either the way your customers are thinking or how your product can be adapted. Try and keep one step ahead.

And what about all those potential customers, those who are interested but are not yet ready to buy? Do you have a way of capturing their details by offering them something irristible that they cannot do without, yet practically costs you nothing? By investing in warm contacts you can educate, offer, seduce, cajole (again) this new customer source for a future sale; they will be the first to know of any new products that you have developed that ‘just hit the spot’, and sales can be encouraged using the ‘early bird catches the worm’ syndrome to guarantee more sales then ever before…

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