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How to be successful online - week 5 of 5

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:20:00 GMT

Welcome to your fifth and final tip on how to be successful online. Should you have any questions in regards, please contact us at Out of the Blue and we would be more than happy to help.

Future-proof your business
Technology is always changing, and it's well known that when it comes to tech, something you've bought one day can technically be obsolete the next week. This is usually just one of those things you need to accept as part of business - but what if you could avoid that issue all together?

Future-proofing your business is about being ready to take advantage of new technology. It's about forging ahead in the direction you want to go, not in the direction that your out-of-date software pushes you. It's protecting your investment so that you don't become consumed with the costs and effort of upgrading all the time.

Imagine that you could buy a new computer that doesn't get obsolete. A computer that, every night when you go to sleep, the latest parts and software are installed and updated for you. A computer that is the best out there - automatically, every day.

That's what our online business systems are. They are a system, built from the ground up for business owners like you, that has incorporated all the major tools a small business needs - not just the ones you need now, but the ones you will need in 3 months, and the ones you'll need next year. We constantly upgrade and add new features while you're asleep, so that you've always got the latest and greatest.

Want to know how you can future-proof your business? Contact us to learn more about how you can future proof your business, with us.

We hope you've found our free tips useful – stay tuned to our blog for more handy (and free!) marketing tips.

How to be successful online - week 4 of 5

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:45:00 GMT

This is your fourth tip of our 5 part series - 5 ways to be successful online. Before we get into it, if you have any questions, please let us know - I'm sure we can be of assistance.

Be Search Engine Friendly
Every day, millions upon millions of people are using search engines like Google to find news, information, products or services. No matter what your product or service is, the chances are that at this very moment there is someone looking for you.

So, what are you doing to make sure you get found? Being search engine friendly is about helping the search engines find and read your site, which in turn helps your prospective customers find and read about your business.

Being search engine friendly is a matter of many things and many factors, and there are many ways that we use to help make your whole website search engine friendly. That said, there are some general "rules" to follow that can help tremendously... and you can try these yourself!

• Use Google's Webmaster tools, and their equivalents. In particular, Google allows you to submit a "sitemap" to them, which essentially lists your site's web pages and tells the search engine where to find them. This sitemap is a file in your website, and is usually named Sitemaps.xml - you should definitely have it. (Note- If you build a website with Out of the Blue we will build and submit this sitemap to Google on your behalf)

• Put yourself in your customers' shoes - what would you type in to Google if you were looking for a business like yours? Write down the top 5 or 10 "keywords" that you would think people are using to look for you. Now when you're writing content for your site, use those keywords as often as possible in your writing. This increases the chance that you will appear near the top of the results when people type in those keywords.

• Focus on quality and usefulness. If your website has high quality, focused and useful content on it, people will link to your site. Links are like "votes" - search engines treat them as an acknowledgement to the usefulness of your site. But not all links are treated equal. Links from high quality sources are given more weight than unknown or "spammy" sites. This is one of the big reasons that buying links isn't always a good idea.

• Engage other sites in your industry. Find blogs, forums and other sites that are related to your business, and comment or participate. Get to know the owners of the other site if possible. If your site truly is high quality, they will happily link to your site - often for free.

Want to start putting these tips to action today? Contact us to see how we can help you put these suggestions into action, or develop a search engine optimisation plan to help your site make the most of search engines.

How OOTB can help
Out of the Blue Marketing builds online business systems with search engines in mind. In the Admin menu you'll find our "Google/Yahoo!/MSN Optimization" option, which allows you to switch on automatic generation of Sitemaps.xml.

Additionally, we can help you write the content of your website so it not only suits search engines, but also appeals to your end user – the customer. Importantly, we use technology, such as search engine friendly URLs, to make your life easier. Search engine friendly URLs allow search engines to more easily read your product pages and associate them with the right keywords. Making sure search engines can easily find your site, so your customers can easily find you.

I hope you've found this tip useful! Next week, look out for our tips in week #5: "Future-proof your business."

How to be successful online - week 3 of 5

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 02:46:00 GMT

This is your third tip of our 5 part series - 5 ways to be successful online. Before we get into it, if you have any questions, please let us know - I'm sure we can be of assistance. Without further ado, let's get into the next of 5 things you should be doing to be successful online: staying in touch with your customers.

Keep in Contact with Your Customers
In our previous tips we discussed how and why you should be building your customer database - because your current customers are a fertile source for recurring revenues and for spreading the word about your products.

One of the most effective ways to drive customers back to your website and keep them in the loop with your latest news is email marketing. Email marketing involves sending an email to your customer database, or a group of customers in your database. Remember this isn't like spam in the slightest - you only send to customers who have given you permission, and you're sending them useful information they actually want to receive!

But... What Do I Write?
Figuring out what to write in your emails to everyone is the hardest part. It needs to follow the golden rules of content: Be relevant, Be useful. Here's 4 tips to help you work out what to write.

1. A Newsletter? Every business can write a newsletter. It doesn't have to be a monthly newsletter, it can be bi-monthly or quarterly, but every business has news and information, promotions and announcements that can fill up a newsletter. And keep your customers in the loop.

2. Tips and Advice are very well received and happily read by your customers. If you are a service based business, such as an accountancy or lawyer this is probably the most suitable newsletter to run. That said, nearly every business has advice they can impart!

3. Promotions and Special Offers are another type of email well received by your customers. These don't need to be scheduled or regular, so you can send them whenever you have a special offer or promotion running. They suit online stores incredibly well.

4. Special announcements are another cause for an email campaign. Do you have some news that your customers would be interested in? If your announcements or interesting news aren't regular enough for a newsletter, there's no reason you can't send once off campaigns when they come up.

Want to start putting these tips to action today? Contact us to see how we can help you keep in contact with your customers.

How OOTB can help
Out of the Blue Marketing has extensive experience in building online solutions with email marketing capabilities built in! Additionally, our sites include a built-in customer database to capture your customer's details so you can easily send your database an email newsletter. It takes just minutes to send out a professional and effective email marketing campaign.

I hope you've found this tip useful! Next week, look out for our tips in week #4: "Be Search Engine Friendly".

How to be successful online - week 2 of 5

Sun, 29 May 2011 23:42:00 GMT

This is your second tip of our 5 part series - 5 ways to be successful online. Before we get into it, if you have any questions, please let us know - I'm sure we can be of assistance. Let's get into how building a customer database can help you become successful online.

Build a Customer Database

Garnering awareness and acquiring customers is one of the great challenges of building a business. It is so essential that there is an entire business discipline dedicated to this - which we know as marketing (we should know a thing or two about that lol). It's fair to say that any customer that finds your business or website is highly valuable to you, and you want to hold on to them as long as possible.

That's where the idea of a database comes in. A customer database is simply your list of contact information of the customers that you have dealt with in the past. So why keep a list of them? Because they are your best source for future revenue and word of mouth. Who better to announce your newest product line to then the people who loved your last product line? Who better to spread the word about your new service than those who've used it previously?

That's all well and good, but how can you get your customers' contact information? Well, here's 4 simple strategies to use your website to get relevant customer information.

Give something away. Give every customer who fills in an online form something valuable in exchange for their email address. It could be a discount voucher, or an ebook that you have written, or exclusive VIP content.

A simple "Contact Us" web form. This is a form you can put on your site so that your customers can ask questions and submit their comments. You'll be surprised by how many of your visitors will take the time to ask a question, and in the form, you can ask for their email address.

Run an online discussion forum. People love to chat with other customers and share their knowledge and opinions. You can empower your customers to do the same, and as part of the process, ask them to give their email address to use as a username.

Sell something! When people buy from your online shop, ask them for an email address to send the receipt/confirmation to.

Want to start putting these tips to action today? Contact us to see how we can help you use your website to effectively source customer information.

How OOTB can help

Out of the Blue Marketing can design and develop an online system to undertake the above suggestions with ease. Most importantly, contact details are all captured in one, central customer database. Why is this important? Because you don't want your customer's details strewn across multiple disconnected tools - you want them centralized and close to hand so they are easy for you to access and use appropriately.

Here are some examples of how our online systems can help you implement the above strategies:

Web Forms are set up to capture customer details directly into your customer database. These can be used for contact forms or competitions etc.

Forums are an easy way to garner useful customer information. We do all the technical bits and you reap the rewards of maintaining contact with your customers.

An Online Shop can be built into your online solution from the beginning, or at a later date. All orders processed through your online shop are automatically linked to a customer record with your customer's contact details in it. Easy!

I hope you've found these tips useful! Next week, look out for our tips in week #3: "Keep in Touch with Your Customers".

How to be successful online - week 1 of 5

Tue, 24 May 2011 00:38:00 GMT

Did you know that the vast majority of websites fail? There's many reasons for it, but there's also some simple things you can do to protect yours from the same fate. Over the next 5 weeks, we're going to post 1 tip a week, every week, to help you make a success of YOUR website.

If you have any questions, please let us know –we’d be happy to be of assistance. Without further ado, let's get into the first of the five things you should be doing to be successful online!

Update your site regularly

Can you update your site yourself? We're not talking about big design changes or anything, just news and announcements, maybe some articles you've written, or a monthly blog post or two.

If you can't, or you don't - you need to and you should! The fact is that search engines like Google absolutely adore fresh, valuable content on websites - so the more content you add and the fresher your site is, the higher the chance that you'll rank highly in search results - meaning more customers and more profits.

Now, the next question is - what to write? This is the hardest bit, so we've prepared three strategies to help you figure out what to write about.

Think about what's been happening in the last month in your business. Did you make any milestones in terms of customers, profit numbers, product releases or new staff hires? Write about them! Customers love to read positive things about your business - it shows you're authentic and successful, which are good signs for any business.

Did something special or interesting happen to you that taught you a positive lesson you could share? Maybe you went to the coffee shop and were really "wowed" by their customer service. Perhaps they even inspired you to improve your own service. Share these stories with your customers on a blog post! They're fun, interesting and they say a lot about the things your business values.

Think about what's going to happen in the next month - is there anything interesting? Are you going to receive your 1000th order? Are you about to receive a huge shipment or discount frisbees? Tell your customers and build up some excitement!

There's always something to write, just remember the golden rules of content and you'll be fine:

Is the content relevant to your customers or your business?
Does the content add value to your customers?

Want to start putting these tips to action today? Contact us to find out how you can easily add fresh content to your website.

How OOTB can help

Does all this sound hard? Well, once upon it time it was hard to update and manage your own website. But with our online business platform it's simple and intuitive. You can use a range of simple tools to add content. Here's just a few:

Web Pages

Out of the Blue makes updating your website pages simple! We build an easy to use content editor that looks just like your familiar word processor. This means you can quickly and easily make small additions to your site, yourself- no need for any website coding or tricky web design!

Blogs

Out of the Blue Marketing can help you build your own blog - which is like an online diary - quickly and easily within your own website. With a blog, you can post thoughts, ideas and observations and share them with your website visitors.

Announcements

Sharing news is easy with Announcements. You can use the announcements for quick news updates and interesting upcoming events.

We hope you've found these tips useful! Look out for our tips in week #2 "Build a better customer database".

Make the most of Google Places

Wed, 11 May 2011 23:04:00 GMT

Geo-location marketing is the current darling of social media and Google Places is at the forefront of this trend. If you haven’t yet claimed a Google Places page for your business, then you should. It’s free, easy-to-use and highly beneficial to both your search and brand image.

What is it?
A Google Places page is a free service for businesses which can display information relating to your business, such as hours of operation, address, phone number, email address, website URL, photos and videos. It can also describe your products and services and allows customers to add reviews to your page.

Why is it useful?
The biggest reason for getting a Google Place page is search. Both on computers and on mobile browsers Google puts emphasis on Places pages in its localised search results. By not having a Google Places page, you're hurting your chances of being on the first page of search results. Google Places adds particular value to businesses that serve local customer.
What’s more, a red pin that shows the business’s location on a corresponding map also accompanies all Google Places pages that are shown in search results. Having a geographical presence on search engines is proving increasingly popular and beneficial for both sales and traffic alike.

Top Tips to create a great Google Places Page
1.   Add keywords to your description
You have up to 200 characters to describe your business. Make sure you use your key search words and write a compelling description that will appeal to users.

2.   Add images and videos to your page
Photos and videos can add brand value to your page and will make your business stand out from others. You can add up to 10 photos and up to five videos for free.

3.   Add a URL to your Google Page
This may sound obvious, however many still forget to do this. Having your URL on your Places page will increase traffic and offer users a chance to find out more.

4.   Be precise with your location
Adding a precise address for your business will enable users to see your exact location on Google Maps in relation to theirs or other nearby landmarks.

5.   Encourage customers to add reviews
Reviews can be the difference between someone choosing your business over another. Reviews add authenticity to your page and also flesh out your listing.

6.   Create a Places Page for each location
If your business has a number of different locations, create individual pages for each of them. This will help with search and will enable you to list contact details for each venue.

7.   Get listed in relevant online business directories
Do not create your own categories or directories, instead stick to the ones already used by Google Places, that way should somebody search a directory your business will be found.

8.   Claim your page
Even if you haven’t created a Places page yet, your business may in fact have one. This is because Google has the ability to automatically create a Places page or listing for your business based on social networks, maps and other information. If this happens ensure that you claim ownership of the page immediately so that you can then manage the information it contains.

9.   Promote your promotions
Although the page’s primary purpose is to offer information, there is no reason for you not to mention any running campaigns or promotions on it. Featuring special deals and discounts can enhance the appeal of your page.

10.   Track you page’s analytics
Monitoring your Google Places page with analytics can teach you a number of things about the people who are searching and discovering your business or service. Google Places is equipped with an analytics dashboard that can automatically email you findings.

Facebook Fact!

Wed, 11 May 2011 23:05:00 GMT

Did you know that females aged 55+ are the fastest growing group on Facebook?