The Sales Training AcademyContent marketing is the creation of content aimed at helping customers learn more about things they’re interested in. Often it is some free comparison, white papers, reports or blue prints.
Sometimes content marketing could involve a free consultation, advice or a quote but it is all designed to help a business establish rapport and build their own brand awareness so that customers feel comfortable buying from them.
Our Digital Marketing Courses will help you understand how to use Content to improve the success of your website & online marketing.
It’s almost summer and most households are planning their festive season activities. There’ll be family catch-ups, BBQ’s, parties and quiet romantic nights and NONE of these work well indoors in summer without good air conditioning!
Earley’s Electrical, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration are experts in air conditioning from install to service and repair and Neville has started using educational marketing to help home owners prepare for summer.
Purchasing a domain name is cheap, setting up hosting is cheap, installing WordPress is FREE but if you’re not technically savvy and you’re trying to do your own digital marketing then it’s Crazy what you need to pay for.
I’ve been working with Aussie and US hosting companies for over 10 years and there is a LOT of competition so these hosting companies tend to focus on the monthly price. Most business owners didn’t understand the value of their hosting several years ago and just went with the cheapest option but here are a couple reasons I recommend you spend a little extra..
We’ve just beefed up the content and examples in our WordPress Beginners 901 training course to include examples of how you could optimise website pages and blog pages yourself. It’s a job that someone in the office can do or that you can outsource to a part-time employee or contractor – OR someone like us!
Like many tasks in many businesses Search Engine Optimisation is not a complex task, it just involves understanding the language your customers use when trying to search for you and where to optimise your website for those keywords and key phrases.
Digital Marketing is the buzz word for getting more website visitors, getting more clicks on your website and basically getting more customers but sometimes it seems that you just participate because the experts tell you to!
In some cases it is important to stake your place or get your own URL at websites like YouTube or Facebook but the purpose for many sites has most small business owners baffled.
Instagram serves one very obvious purpose to me – it helps you get images from your smartphone onto your website. This means that your staff or contractors can do some of the work that you’d normally pay a digital marketer for.
I wrote recently about OmniChannel marketing and some readers weren’t sure what this means – essentially it means using lots of different ways of reaching potential customers using services like Twitter, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, MailChimp and other email marketing software etc.
When you use each of these digital marketing tools separately they can be a LOT of hard work so the best thing to do is create a digital strategy that leverages tasks that you can do easily from your mobile phone like Facebook posts or Instagram shares, but that you can use several times.
If your digital marketing is like most small businesses it is a collection of different tools that different “experts” told you you had to have, so they set it up for you! The problem with that is you’ll have too many “experts” and a right royal mess that someone at some stage will have to clean up!
Google Tag Manager is one tool that helps to bring all the mess together into something much more organised.
If you advertising on Facebook or you want to, then you’ll be interested to learn that they are changing the way they demonstrate insights.
The key changes relate to the removal of these metrics:
The important ones to consider are your relevance score and what that will be replaced by and you can learn more about that here on Facebook.
If your ads take Facebook users to a page that is not relevant or doesn’t keep their interest you may find the cost of your ads will increase. Google do something similar but in their quest to outsmart Google Facebook are now offering insights and metrics on Quality Ranking, Engagement Rate Ranking, and Conversion Rate Ranking.
In the end what you really want is a sale or a lead and there are ways of measuring the success of these campaigns. Not sure where to start? Get a FREE Digital Marketing Strategy consultation.
Video marketing is a fantastic tool to demonstrate your knowledge to potential customers and it is well known for it ability to keep visitors at your website for long but some business owners don’t realised just how easy it is to use.
If you’d like to set up a website for your business using WordPress or some other content management system (CMS), you’ll need your own domain name and then you’ll need a web hosting company.
You can get a website hosting package with email services bundled together from companies like Net Registry, but if you shop around, you will be able to find a good web host in the U.S. that are usually cheaper and provide better service. Here are the details about the hosting company we prefer and why.
Content is what your customers see in your ads and on your website and landing pages. Combine the content with a Lead Capture strategy to turn strangers into identifiable humans (ie. getting email addresses and phone numbers) and you understand the value of digital marketing in the whole sales and revenue process.
Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have managed to turn the tables of marketing and advertising to something that is now massively slanted towards digital and online (and mobile) so good digital marketing skills and experience will give you an edge in almost EVERY organisation.
The key measuring points for digital marketing roles are:
SEEK’s new career guide shows statistics for every industry and Digital Marketing Jobs are currently the highest paying, followed closely by marketing.
Check it out here: SEEK Career Guide for Digital Marketing Jobs
If you want to learn everything from blog writing, search engine optimisation, landing pages, call-to-action, email marketing using Mailchimp and Feedburner and much more then the COMPLETE Digital Marketing Training Course package is available on a study loan payment plan for just $25 per week.
Painting is an important task that immediately improves the value of a property. If you know what you’re doing, it’s not a particularly difficult task. If you don’t have any experience, or you don’t have the time, you’ll probably head down to your local Bunnings for some advice, ask a friend, or get online.
Transparency is an important way to build trust with customers. Giving customers honest information about painting their home won’t ever do you out of business — it’ll probably win you some and that’s why Mark created some basic videos with tips on how to do certain aspects of the paint preparation work which he normally performs.
The fact is that no one likes doing it but when people are getting painting done and they realise how time consuming and messy this task is, they’d rather get someone else to do it!
Derek Farmer, a real estate agent on Sydney’s Lower North Shore, used educational videos to help sellers (and buyers, too) understand the sales process. This helped him attract new listings because people trusted that he would be open and honest about the real estate process.
It also made Derek’s job a little easier, because vendors knew what to expect when they were selling their home. That meant the process would proceed relatively stress free because Derek had been upfront about the process — before he’d even met the seller — and usually resulted in a quick sale.
Vendors who had good experiences with Derek recommended him to their friends, relatives, colleagues and neighbours — at one point, Derek had multiple listings, one after the other, in the same street, all due to good recommendations from previous clients.
Tradies, whether they’re painters or plumbers or gardeners, can use educational videos and blogs to demystify the work that they do for customers, and also help stand out from their competitors online and in their local community.
To learn more about using educational content as a marketing strategy for your business, sign up for our digital marketing management services or enrol in our digital and social media marketing training course if you’d like to DIY.
THERE ARE REWARDS AS WELL AS RISKS to providing people with a quote for work, but one of the bigger risks is offering a free measure and quote, only to have the quote knocked back in favour of a competitor’s cheaper one.
This said, despite the risks attached to offering to come out for free and quote a job, it’s still a good way to operate your business.
There are a lot of benefits to visiting a client to provide a free measure and quote, even if you run the risk of wasting your time and money should the quote not be accepted. We take a look at some of these:
Quoting for a job will help you to understand the client and the scope of the project at the same time. People are put more at ease when they know they’re not obligated to pay you just to come out and prepare a quote, so you’ll have better luck getting prospects. You’ll also be able to discern the kind of client the prospect is likely to be, so you can weigh up how to proceed.
Remember risks can involve both the physical risk of injury but also other more nebulous risks, like a client who doesn’t pay on time or is unrealistic about timeframes, costs or the types of materials required. With experience, you’ll become better at seeing the warning signs early on, but if you’re new to being self-employed, these are things you should pay particular attention to.
As we said in our previous post about the risks and rewards of quoting, if you make it easy for people to do business with you, you’re more likely to get quick or even immediate acceptance of your quotes. This is really important as a business, because it keeps in a steady stream of work, which is good for your cash flow, and ultimately, costs you less money — because you’re not following up on unaccepted quotes — in the long run.
In many of our blogs we’ve strongly suggested that using a cloud-based accounting application like Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks makes it really easy for prospects to accept estimates and to pay you. Better still if you can produce estimates for prospects while you’re still at their home or business. This shows you’re reliable, well organised and keen.
Demonstrating efficiency, organisation and enthusiasm are clearly attractive qualities in any builder, tradesperson or other small business person who provides on-site quotes (they’re attractive qualities in anybody!) because it shows that you care about the work you do and that you’ll do it in a timely manner.
For help creating sales and marketing messages that will deliver more leads to your business or determining the right places to advertise your business online, contact the team at Virion for more information about our content marketing services.
THERE ARE PROS AND CONS to charging a day rate. But part of charging the right day rate involves quoting jobs correctly.
Part of charging the right day rate involves quoting jobs correctly.
And what are the requirements for quoting a job properly? You need solid experience in the field you work in, and the ability to evaluate a job thoroughly to ensure you’ve accounted for all the things could crop up once work commences.
Yes it is important to take into account things that could come up after you start a job that might require additional materials and time. This said, don’t factor them into your quote unless you’re reasonably sure they could occur. If you do, you risk your quote being too high.
Providing someone with an unnecessarily high quote reduces the likelihood that they’ll accept it, which only just ends up costing you money — you spent time working on the quote, after all.
If you’re an experienced builder, your hourly rate is going to be much higher than a labourer’s, who is paid between $20 and $30 an hour. If you’re quoting for a job that requires substantial digging, which is time-consuming, but ultimately, unskilled work, subcontract that out to a labourer, to keep the price to your client down.
Again, you’re unlikely to have your quote accepted if you’re quoting to do all of the work yourself at your regular rate. Most people will get more than one quote, so if you’re quoting above what the market rate is for a given job, you probably won’t get the work.
Use electronic accounting software like Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks to create estimates that you can email to your clients while you’re still talking to them. This means they’ll be able to ask you any questions about the quote, and possibly even accept it on the spot.
Use electronic accounting software like Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks to create estimates that you can email to your clients while you’re still talking to them.
This will reduce the amount of estimates you have to spend time following up on, and also help you to better structure your work as you’ll have a more steady flow of work.
Maybe you’re a sole trader, tradesperson or small business owner who would like help figuring out the right places to advertise your business online.
CHARGING A DAY RATE FOR YOUR WORK, instead of an hourly rate, can be a good way of making sure you get paid a certain amount for each job. This can help you set a budget and ensure you’re bringing in a certain amount of money each week. It also gives your clients some peace of mind, because they will know how much to set aside to pay you.
Charging a day rate can help you set a budget and ensure you’re bringing in a certain amount of money each week.
But just as there are advantages to charging a day rate, there are some disadvantages too.
Not all projects are well-suited to charging a day rate, particularly if they’re complex and have the potential to be time-consuming.
Jobs that are straightforward or where most of your day will be spent doing labour work are better suited to day rates, leaving the longer, more intricate work that has the potential to take a long time to an hourly rate.
If you want to work out how to set budgets and what kind of rates you should be charging to cover all your on-the-job expenses, get yourself trained up in one of our online cloud accounting courses in MYOB or Xero.
Want help creating sales and marketing messages that will deliver more leads to your business? Contact the team at Virion for more information about our content marketing services.
MARKETING AND ACCOUNTING ARE CLOSELY linked if you look at accounting as dealing with the money that’s going in and out of your business, usually as a consequence of your marketing activities.
In our new online training course, Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI for Xero, you’ll learn how to enter all of your business’s expenses, including the money you spend on marketing. Anything to do with making your business “discoverable” by a potential customer is considered a marketing activity.
Anything to do with making your business “discoverable” by a potential customer is considered a marketing activity.
That includes business cards, website costs, domain names, Google AdWords, etc, and should be recorded in Xero as a marketing expense.
To determine your Return on Investment (ROI), you should use Excel or a marketing platform like Hubspot to record where your business comes from so you can assign each activity an income stream.
It’s important to monitor how your marketing spend is performing for your business. Otherwise how will you know what’s working and what’s not?
In our Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI course for Xero, you’ll go through the steps required to determine the ROI for certain areas of a business. If you refer to the Excel spreadsheet showing the income generated by particular marketing activities — print ads, hipages subscriptions, Google AdWords, etc, you’ll be able to work out the ROI.
Monitoring how your marketing spend performs for your business is incredibly important. It’ll help you to see what’s working, what’s not working, and what needs to be changed to make it perform better.
Learn how to determine the ROI of many of your business’s activities in our Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI course for Xero. To learn more about, or enrol in, our new Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI course for Xero, visit our website.
BUNNINGS HAS, FOR A LOT OF HOMEOWNERS, become the default place to get their home renovated — and not just the DIY renovators, either. Bunnings, very wisely, realised that a lot of the people who came to look at their kitchens and bathrooms were going to have a tradesperson install them.
Bunnings made the smart move of partnering with local tradies — cabinet makers, builders, plumbers, and so on — to also offer an installation service, like other kitchen and bathroom companies.
Just as every good tradesman or tradeswoman will partner with other local tradespeople so they can refer business to each other, it’s wise to partner with bigger business — like Bunnings or Mitre 10, and so forth — which can refer work to you when they have customers in need of your services.
Every good tradesman or tradeswoman will partner with other local tradespeople so they can refer business to each other.
Lots of online marketplaces like Airtasker and Hipages partner with retailers to offer installation services to their customers. Airtasker, for example, partnered with the Good Guys, so customers could find someone to install their new TV or Bose system.
Likewise, Hipages partnered with IKEA, Ray White and the Housing Industry Association (HIA) to provide them with top quality tradespeople who can provide installation and other types of work.
Working with a business like the Good Guys, IKEA or Bunnings provides better payment security for your business. In the case of Bunnings, they will typically measure and quote for a job at a set price. This just leaves it up to you to complete the job, and then get paid.
You’re not only reducing the amount of time you spend measuring and quoting for jobs, you also cut out all the follow-up you need to do to get your quotes accepted.
You’ll want to keep up your online marketing and advertising, so you’re getting your own jobs, with the potential to earn more money. The jobs you get through Bunnings or the Good Guys just help to keep the home-fires burning when you’re waiting for your other jobs to get approved.
For help creating sales and marketing messages that will deliver more leads to your business or determining the right places to advertise your business online, contact the team at Virion for more information about our content marketing services.