This lesson follows on from “be different” and in some ways is the same point, but I think this one deserves it’s own post because it is very pertinent to those likely to be reading this blog.

It may sound obvious but one reason some people prefer to deal with smaller organisations, or individuals, is the fact that they can get some personal attention, and they can feel important.

Large corporations can seem cold, and when you call up you will probably never speak to the same person twice. For a demonstration of this, call up your telecoms provider a few times and see if you speak to the same person.

Be a good little fish

Sometimes being a small fish in a big pond can seem daunting, but use it in the right way and you will find in many ways it can be a significant advantage. i have dealt with clients who are so impressed with the level of service and communication that what started out as a small job rapidly grew into more business, simply because I treated them personally, communicated effectively (and often!) and was transparent in the whole design process.

Call back!

I cannot stress this enough. If you promise to call a client at a specific date or time, DO IT! This may sound so obvious but it is amazing how often this does not happen. Large corporations are worse at it than small ones, I must say. What I will say is if you keep your promises you “may” have a customer for life, but if you fail to keep your promise you may not keep them til next week!

Follow up

This is one aspect that is often overlooked, and is something that can be very effective. Maybe it is because a lot of us designers come from design backgrounds as opposed to sales backgrounds. We prefer to get stuck in, producing products, designs etc.

If you speak to a successful sales person they will have a big list of clients. When they have a gap in their day they will be on the phone, checking in with their customers, keeping at the forefront of their mind. This is oh so easy to do, not necessarily by phone, but certainly by email. Even if you don’t get more business from it, it will no doubt be appreciated and make the customer feel important.

It’s not rocket science

This is probably one of the easiest posts to apply to your work. It is pretty much ALL common sense. Maybe you are doing it all already, maybe you can improve.

The overriding message here, I suppose, is make your customers like you. If your customers like you and respect you then guess what?… They will talk about you and recommend you. You will have heard it time and time again but personal recommendation is the best sort of business you can get. It is easy to achieve if you play your cards right and follow some simple rules, but is often overlooked.

LowestCostCreditCard.com officially went live today. This is an idea I had last week so I haven’t had too much time to fill it with content, but hopefully over the next week or two I can get some articles online and see if we can’t get it noticed!

The idea is fairly simple. A site offering latest news, advice, and tricks of the trade concerning credit cards. In the UK (and certain other countries) there are many many different offers by credit card companies, and there are certain tricks they don’t necessarily make clear before you sign up. This site is there to educate the consumer and will be funded by affiliate links.

This is one of a few projects I am working on at the moment. I will report on progress in coming weeks and see how it goes. I want this project to be as transparent as possible, so others can learn from the ups and downs of a spur of the moment decision to cobble together a website in 24 hours and see how long it takes to turn it into a success (or otherwise!).

Please feel free to click the link, take a look and let me know what you think. I am open to criticism here, just please keep in mind the short timeframe I have put this together in.

If you want to compete in the online industry you will already know there is an enormous amount of competition. You can go head to head with the big hitters if you like, but you will always be going uphill. One advantage the smaller players have in this industry is versatility, the ability to change quickly without all the corporate red-tape restrictions. The ability to be different!

There are barriers to being different, like there are in many areas, but most of it is in your imagination. It is easy to doubt the wisdom of being different, and to think “if it was worth being different then everyone would be doing it”, but in actual fact you will find people tend to act a bit like sheep, following each other and doing the same thing. The ones that branch out and find a niche often do very well.

This may sound easy, but how do you go about it? Well firstly it is a case of either spotting a gap in the market, a need for a service that is not provided, or generating a gap in the market, providing a product and then convincing people they need it.  The first one is slightly easier to do, but the second one is more exciting!

One way to spot a gap in the market is to look at a good example of the service (or product) you wish to compete with. No matter how good it is, if you think hard enough you will no doubt be able to spot areas in which it could improve. If you can spot several of these and come up with how to improve upon it then you have taken the first step to spotting a gap in the market.

Example - a car wash

Car washes have been around for many years. They provide a fairly simple service of cleaning the outside of your car. You would think this had been done to death, or had it?

I used to take my car to carwashes every few weeks. The car came out quite clean but it always used to worry me what would happen if the rotating brushes caught a bit of grit. It never happened to me, but I have heard some horror stories.

A few years ago we saw brushless carwashes springing up. Now admittedly these wouldn’t clean a filthy car as well as a brush, but they take the fear out of the experience and that is enough to convince some to take their car there instead.

This is a classic example of spotting a problem that doesn’t have a solution, and providing a similar, yet different, alternative.

If the same person who came up with this idea had decided to compete with the same equipment I am sure they would have failed, or at least not succeeded to the extent they did.

Vive la Différence!

Whether you are starting out in business or looking to grow, consider your market and consider your options. Sometimes it is far less effort to step around the giant than to fight it head on.

Have a think about opportunities in the market. What do people struggle with? What do YOU struggle with? If you can answer these questions then you may be able to spot YOUR gap in the market!

Remember, some of the best inventions and products in t he world have come from people not following the herd.

I have been chatting to various people about various marketing strategies over the past few weeks, as well as trying out Entrecard. My findings have been very interesting. The debate has largely been about whether different methods bring in visitors, and if those visitors are “valuable”.

Trying to get your head around marketing strategy can be really confusing. I find the easiest thing to do is consider yourself to be the “visitor”.

Do you consider yourself to be valuable? Personally I do think my visit is valuable. I don’t necessarily click on the adverts on someone’s blog, but I will read the posts, the comments, and I generally leave a comment along the way, providing I found the article interesting and have something useful to say.

Commenting as a strategy

Of course, when you leave a comment it also links back to your site. Some sites use no-follow and some do not, so in search engine terms the link may or may not be useful. For the purposes of this article we are talking about “useful” in human terms, not the world according to Google.

Looking at people blogs it is quite clear some people are using commenting as a marketing strategy. The same people crop up blog after blog, seemingly on a quest to get that “first!” comment below a post, as if that will magically get extra clicks to their site.

On a personal level I don’t think I have ever clicked these. I quite often scan down the comments and where I see someone making well informed (or just generally witty) comments I do click through to their site. In terms of a marketing strategy I am not so sure, but every little helps, SO LONG AS YOUR COMMENTS ARE USEFUL.

The danger with all these sort of things is the minority spoil it for the rest of us. If you get a few of these “spammers” (for want of a better word) trying to compete for the “first!” comment then it does dilute the quality a bit. Fortunately this blog has not been affected (so far) by this, although I know a few that have.

I must admit I do make an effort to comment wherever I go. I think it is polite. If someone hands you a book they have written and then you hand it back, it is polite to comment on what you think of it, especially if they have not charged you for the privilege of reading it. Blogs are the same. If someone has taken the time to write an article I want to let them know what I think of it.

Go forth and comment!

Some people seem afraid of commenting on blog posts. Please do not be afraid, as someone who spends quite a bit of time writing articles I can definitely say that all comments are welcome (providing they are constructive). If there are aspects that I write about that you think are poor, could be done better etc, I want to know! I aim to improve my articles as time goes on, and the comments I receive (good and bad) help me to do this. If it is determining what I could improve on, or just find out what topics people like to read more of, comments are what make it worthwhile.

It is very easy, especially when embarking on a new business, to undersell your services. Whether it is rear of not getting the “win”, or lack of confidence in your ability or value in your product, it is very easy to pitch too low, to undersell yourself and ultimately to de-value your product or service.

Valuing a product, especially a non-tangible product such as web or graphic design, is a difficult task. If you are new to the business or just starting out on your own it can be a daunting one. You are sat there with no clients, trying, hoping, praying for your first contract. It is all too easy to take “doing whatever it takes” a little too far and lowering your price just to win the deal.

That’s not to say that you don’t need to compromise at all in the beginning. Many a company has fallen by the wayside by being over-confident in their ability, and more importantly in their potential to sell. When you don’t have the reputation behind you and the large client base of the large firms you need something different, something that separates you from the big boys, but in a good way. Just try not to make “price” the difference.

You will no doubt be well aware of the saying “you get what you pay for”. It is a well known and long established saying, and that didn’t happen by accident. As much as people don’t want to pay over the odds, they will also be wary of people charging too little. It is a balancing act, and one that needs careful consideration.

If you have a competitor who is charging less than you, try to work out why. Where do they save over the costs you have? Are they an economy of scale? Do they cut corners? Are they using sub-standard materials, or heaven-forbid are you charging too much? Be honest about all of this and have confidence in your product.

If there are reasons why they are charging less and you can identify them, then that is half the battle. While there are customers happy to save a few bucks, there are also customers who are focused on quality. In the long run customers will not thank a supplier for a lower price at the expense of quality. In time you will speak to potential customers and you WILL find many who have had bad experiences from people who in hindsight seemed “too cheap”.

The key to all of this is have confidence in your product, know your market, set a price you believe in and stick to it. Lack of belief in these things is often the reason people under-sell themselves.

People will pay for good products and good service, but before you can convince them you must convince yourself in the value of your product.

A week ago I decided that I was going to try every piece of technology I came across on the Internet. Not become an expert in it, but at least try it out and report my findings. Today I decided to install Entrecard, a viral marketing “widget”.

First of all let me say there is a LOT of disagreement about Entrecard, it’s value to your website, general misuse, and the concept of “drop and run”. Before I go into these I will explain a bit about what it is.

Entrecard is a system whereby you create a 125×125 pixel advert for your site and “drop” it on other sites that have the Entrecard widget. If the owner of the site likes your advert they will approve it, and usually in turn will visit your site and may “drop” a card on you. This process is repeated over and over until you have approved lots of adverts. These adverts are displayed on your Entrecard widget on your website and a queued up and shown in turn.

The Good

The good thing about Entrecard is people do end up visiting sites they would not have usually visited.

Because the owner has to approve the banner you can assume the advert is at lease vaguely relevant. This is not always the case but more oftem than not it is.

You will get an increase in visitors to your site once you start to use Entrecard, and if you use it according to the guidelines (a lot of dropping) then you should gain a good amount of visitors. The value of these is debatable, and will be discussed further down.

The Bad

Here’s where it starts to get messy. There is a lot of negativity thrown at Entrecard and there are various reasons why.

Firstly, 99% of people who visit your site from an Entrecard link will be Entrecard advertisers. They will load your page, drop their card, and they will be gone within 5 seconds. They will probably not even glance at your posts. The problem with this is twofold. Firstly it takes up needless bandwidth and secondly if you have monetized your site, a visit without any clicks will hit your earnings.

Website success is often judged on visitors per day. Using Entrecard will undoubtedly increase the traffic on your site, but if these people never read the posts and never comment then your statistics are skewed. In my mind the success of a website needs to be judged by genuine visitors per day (not Entrecard) and subscribers to news feeds/newsletters.

The Ugly

More importantly than the above points is the fact that it is seen by many as amateurish and people who otherwise would take your message seriously will see you at attention seeking and unprofessional. For this reason I am unsure if I will keep it on this site.

So, what do you think?

I have only just added the feature to my site, so at present I am unsure how it will work out. From what I have heard you need to put in a lot of effort dropping cards here there and everywhere. I am unwilling to do that.

The reason I am unwilling is I am not going to drop a card on someone if I am not genuinely interested in participating on their site. I think it is rude and defeats the object of networks in general. I know a few people with Entrecards and I will drop on them, but I will also read their posts and comment on them.

For this reason I am unsure if Entrecard will work for me. I will give it a little while to bed in, see how it affects the stats, and will post an update once I have some findings to report.

A question we get asked all the time is “how to get on page 1 of google”? There is no easy answer but what I tell people is that is not necessarily the Holy Grail of web marketing, it is more a by-product of a successful marketing campaign.

Imagine you run a normal “physical” business in Harrogate (i.e. not on the web) and you partnered with a company who designed you flyers, leaflets, adverts or whatever it may be. Imaging also you were listed in the phone book. Would you rely on the phone book to generate your income, probably (hopefully!) not.

When a business starts up it is important to spread the word as far and as wide as possible. New start up’s get their adverts put in as many local places as they can and rely on as many mediums as possible, shop windows, letterboxes, local publications, word of mouth etc. In this case you would target local Harrogate publications, Harrogate Advertisor etc.

Now imagine the following:

• The Yellow Pages: Google
• Local publications: Harrogate Council websites and business directories
• Letterbox advertising: Emails
• Word of mouth: Forums, comments on websites, actual word of mouth!

Each of these are as important as the other, and a business cannot succeed without them.

Now imagine that the Yellow Pages would not list your business unless you prove you have done the other advertising too. Yes, you guessed it, that’s pretty much how Google works!

So, in essence what you need to do is focus less on Google and more on making your business a success. If you do the other aspects of your campaign right your Google ranking will look after itself!

If your computer is anything like mine your bookmarks (favourites) list will be at least as long as your screen, crammed full of interesting (and not so interesting) links you visited way back when. Take a minute to look at a few of them, and re-visit some of these sites.

I did this exercise the other day and found 3 or 4 sites that had so much new content, yet there was no way of me knowing about it without going back to see.

How often would people re-visit your site just to see if there is new content?

There lies the crux of the matter. You can update your content as often as you like, but nobody will see it unless they come back to see.

There are two tools you have to assist you, both very different from each other.

1) The mailing list

This is a difficult one to manage. You get people to add their email address to your list in order to receive updates from you. The problem being how often is it acceptable to “update” the user, vevery post, every week, every month?

People also have a mistrust of this mechanism in terms, worried about ther email address ending up on a spam list.

2) The RSS feed

This is a better option, although requires the user to be a bit more “techno-savvy”.

Basically they use a client like Outlook or Thunderbird to subscribe to your content. They will then receive an update in their mailbox when you update your site.

This works well as it is less intrusive and they can choose to read the update as and when they like. They can even download the last few weeks and read about it on the airplane when they are flying to a meeting.

The only probem with RSS is an awful lot of people still don’t know about it, understand it, or use it. I have half a dozen RSS feeds in my Outlook and would not be without it now.

The good news

The good news is every ThinkSynergy site as of 2008 has RSS built in and is ready to go straight away. If you would like to see how RSS works just click the Orange icon on the right column and subscribe to our RSS feed.