11 Jun

Online success – Look before you leap!

By June 11, 2012

Most serious businesses chase online success to some extent! Some spend millions doing so while others attempt to achieve it at very little cost.

The online objectives of companies differ and some are even in conflict with their business aims & objectives. Knowing your business aims should inform your online objectives. What you aim to achieve through the medium of the internet should underpin your overall business strategy.

Whether marketing is the primary purpose of your online presence or maintaining and improving customer relationships, whether you are looking to improve sales and / or reduce costs the actions you take can have a significant knock-on effect on many other aspects of your business. A detailed understanding of the possible implications of your online activities is a prerequisite for success.

Launching a campaign, for example an email or social media campaign, or even better a combined email and social campaign, when you are not able to respond to the resulting requests from clients or prospects will damage the business reputation, possibly beyond repair. Getting to number 1 in the search engines and converting searchers to customers for a product or service which isn’t profitable or scalable will damage the bottom line and may even threaten business survival.

There are few things in life which are the same online as offline – but one of the few is the concept of ‘look before you leap’ or ‘be careful what you wish for’!

Filed Under: Leicester, Marketing, Profitability, Social Tagged With: , ,
29 May

Social Technology – the Next Step

By May 29, 2012

For those business people who really know what the internet can mean to their bottom line and have the basic understanding of internet marketing the Next Step is very visible, and it relies on an understanding of Social Technology.

First, common practice dictates, you need an attractive & effective presence online. Then you need the business processes in place to convert visitors to prospects, and then clients. The Next Step is to use social technologies to improve conversations / communication (leading to better branding, traffic and conversion) and it seems really obvious and, at first glance, easy.

However, for many (most) successful business people, who grew up before the advent of online social technologies, this can be a daunting prospect.

Understanding how the social world hangs together can be hard enough in ‘real life’. But online it is complicated 1000 fold by the remoteness of many of the contacts – both physically and in terms of their base set of interests. You will generally socialise with people of similar major interests to yourself or at least the overlap of interests will be significant. Online you are likely to be ‘meeting’ and ‘conversing’ with people who only share a very minor overlap of interest and the approach to capturing their attention is consequently somewhat different.

There is a process which can help you do this. There are no golden bullets or quick fixes. Like anything worthwhile, effort is required, and plenty of it. But, like most things, once you gain a basic understanding of the theory and practice of using social technology effectively your business goals can be achieved without excessive pain or expenditure.

We work with owners of small businesses (in and around Leicester). And for them time always ends up being the critical factor. Their time, personally (and possibly other employees too – depending on business size etc). But just like a business owner wouldn’t send someone else to the IOD or other high level meeting in their place – getting someone else to perform some aspects of the processes necessary to use social technology effectively is difficult to justify and manage.

 

Filed Under: Leicester, Social, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,