Planning your first simple sales funnel

A sales funnel is the journey you take your customer on to lead them from follower who may or may not be interested in what you do, to getting a sale or a sign up to one of your services.

My last blog looked at how to create a sales funnel, which gave information about all the various steps of a sales funnel. This blog post breaks things down even more and gives you an example of a very simple first sales funnel.

Step 1 – free content

The awareness stage focuses on attracting potential customers. This typically starts online with social media posts and/or blog posts or maybe YouTube videos – FREE information that you give out. This is where your potential customers enter your funnel –the awareness stage.  

Potential customers could stay at this stage for a long time – they love your content and enjoy learning the things you teach them or show them. So free content moves them into the education stage.

Step 2 – you introduce your low-cost offer.

I’m going to cover two ways to introduce a low-cost offer to entice potential customer to buy.

Social media offer

With social media, you can offer a substantial discount to get a customer through that first hurdle of buying from you. I often see ‘Tenner Tuesday’ or ‘Fiver Friday’ on Facebook. This is a risk-free and low-cost way for a potential customer to try out your products or services.

This is a good way to get that first customer, but there are no guarantees that they’ll buy again from you, because other than seeing your business and your products on social media, they may not look for you again. If you have a website or online shop, it’s important to give them details of this so that they have a further opportunity to look at your products/services.  

Opt-in offer.

If you have a website, then you can set up an opt-in offer that encourages your potential customers to subscribe to your email newsletter.

Opt-in content is still available to your potential customers free of charge, but this is where you get an email address in exchange for the content. Subscribing to your email newsletter can be the first step towards the decision stage, where they say ‘yes’ to something.    

So, your opt-in offer is something you give away for free to get someone to subscribe to your newsletter. What you offer will depend on the type of business you run. It could be:

  • An e-Book or PDF
  • A checklist
  • A free small product (although I wouldn’t advise this as it will cost you money for postage)
  • A small discount
  • A tutorial on ‘how to’ do something
  • A webinar or video series

This is called a lead magnet, because it attracts a potential customer with the free content, (like a magnet), which entices someone to give their email address (lead).  

So, they sign up via your website or link you’ve put on social media, and they receive their free content, in exchange for their email address. You now have them signed up to your newsletter – and they have said that first ‘yes.’

Step 3 – have a further offer within your newsletter.  

When someone signs up to your newsletter, they will usually get a thank you email, with their free offer attached or a link to download it or go to it (if it’s a video or tutorial).

Then you have a small email sequence that begins to nurture that relationship, and you can suggest a further offer, which is a low-cost offer. This low-cost offer is very low risk to the potential customer, and low risk to you as it doesn’t cost you much, if anything, depending on what it is. It means that your potential customers can try out your paid offer without spending a lot.

What you offer, again will depend on what kind of business you are. For example, you could offer a low-cost webinar or tutorial, that you send them online, or that is on your website in a hidden page. It could be you offer an incentive to buy something with a discount (like your Tenner Tuesday or Fiver Friday) if you’re a product-based business.  

If they take you up on the low-cost offer, they have taken the first step to being a customer and your funnel is working! And so long as your low-cost offer gives them great value and they love it, they are more likely to buy from you again – and pay a little more for your higher cost products or services.

It takes time.

It takes time for potential customers to decide to take you up on one of your more expensive products or services, but by nurturing that relationship through your email newsletter, where they learn more about you and your business, and get to know you more, there is a chance they will convert to a regular customer. You can also continue to nurture this relationship on social media.

The decision stage and action stage can take a while for your follower on social media, or subscriber to your newsletter to trust you enough to buy from you, but it will happen. By creating the odd offer or discount every now and again, it will further encourage that undecided someone to convert to a buyer or client.   

Once you’ve mastered that all important simple funnel, you can move on to something more complicated, such as upsells and downsells, or even move them to a more profitable funnel, which if you have email marketing, you can do through segmenting your market – which is another blog post in future!

If you find this all a bit too complicated, you can book a free call with me to discuss how I can help you move forward and create your own sales funnel.  

Contact me for a free consultation

 

How to create a sales funnel for your small business

There is so much to do when you have your own small business and the most difficult thing that my followers tell me about is how hard it is to get sales. There is no ‘one size fits all’ answer, but a sales funnel is a way that can help push your potential customers in the right direction.

A sales funnel gives you a structure to encourage your potential customers through, on a journey which is designed to turn them into happy customers. There are lots of ways to do this, but I’m going to explain in this post how to create a simple, but effective funnel that anyone can use.

What is a sales funnel? 🥴

A sales funnel is simply a pathway you want your potential customers to take on their way to loving your products or services enough to buy them. It’s about moving them from first finding your business, to them taking their first action.

It’s called a funnel because, like a funnel, the number of potential customers will decrease as they move through each stage, so you’re left with the ones that want to buy from you.

Before you think about your funnel, you need to think about two specific questions:

  1. What is the most important problem that your products or services solve for your customers?
  2. What is the first step you want potential customers to take?

No matter what you do, you will solve a problem for your customers:

🍔 You’re a restaurant – your customers are hungry – you provide the solution.

🧵 You make greetings cards – your customers want a card for a specific occasion – you provide the solution.

💻 You provide a marketing coaching service – your customers need help and guidance on how to market their business – you provide the solution.

🎄 You have a crafting business and make Christmas items – your customers need to decorate their house/tree/cake for Christmas – you provide the solution.

I could go on, but I’m sure you see where I’m coming from.

What is the first step you want potential customers to take? You may want them to go to your website, browse your online shop, engage with your social media posts, read your blog posts, or subscribe to your newsletter. All these things contribute to you getting to know potential customers and leading them on their journey.

The four stages of the Sales Funnel

There are four different stages in the sales funnel:

  • The Awareness stage – where you are focusing on attracting potential customers. This is about promoting your business – putting out good content on social media sites, where you can highlight your expertise in what you do – be it creating products or offering a service. 
  • The Education stage – this is where you capture leads and really build relationships with those potential customers, by demonstrating how you solve their problems. This is where you want them to see that you are an expert in your field. Whether you:
    – write ‘how to’ articles to help your audience.
    – take the most beautiful photos that mesmerise your audience (and sell them on canvas, on mugs, on cards, magnets etc).
    – video yourself creating your product so your audience can see the exact process you go through.
    Through these things, you’ll show your potential customers that you are an expert at what you do, you know what you’re talking about and that your products or services can help them.   
  • The Decision stage – this is sometimes also called the engagement stage because this stage is where you truly engage your audience to take one action. If your sales funnel is working, your audience will take one small step closer to a sale. That one little ‘yes’ can bring you closer, but you must lead them there. This is where a call to action often comes in. You TELL them what you want them to do next. That could be:
    – sign up to your newsletter.
    – read another of your blog posts.
    – watch a video
    – contact you
    – go to your online shop or website
    – follow you on SM – giving them details of all your socials
    Once they say ‘yes’ to one decision, they’re likely to say ‘yes’ to others.
  • The Action stage. Just like the title suggests, this is where your potential customers take positive action and become customers. Your leads have converted to sales! This is sometimes known as the Conversion stage. During this stage, your customers will buy your products or services, or buy your online course, opt-in to your email list, request more information from you about your product or service or book a call. 

Conclusion

Sales funnels always sound very complicated, but they’re not if you follow these simple steps. 😀 You may have to adapt some of it to suit your particular business, or depending on what you want your end goal to be. I’ve used the end goal for this funnel to be ‘make a sale’ but you can use the same principle for any other goal you’d like to achieve with your business.

If you still think this is a bit overwhelming and need help in putting a plan in place, I can help you with this through a couple of coaching sessions. 👩‍🏫

Get in touch if you want to find out more, or if you want my help.

Using emojis to boost your engagement! 🤩

This might surprise you, but according to Quintly, the use of emojis on Instagram increases engagement by a huge 48%. They found that posts using emojis on Instagram have an interaction rate of 2.21% and posts without have 1.77%.

And, according to stats shared by casualastronaut.com “Using emojis in Facebook posts increases likes by 57%, comments by 33% and shares by 33%.”

Now that might not seem like a lot, but when you consider that there are more than 2 billion smartphone users throughout the world, sending more than 41.5 billion messages and 6 billion emojis every single day (source digiday.com), that’s a good percentage.  

People just love emojis, they’re fun and engaging and a great way to communicate online. Emojis add that personal touch from smiley faces, to hearts, to sad faces to thumbs up – they convey a whole raft of emotions in a quick and easy to understand way.

Obviously, not every business will want to use emojis as it’s not appropriate for everyone, such as solicitors and funeral parlours, but they can help make your brand more fun.

However, this doesn’t mean suddenly using shed loads of emojis in every post you do on social media, they need to be used in moderation. If you use too many, your brand could be seen as unprofessional or too jokey, so use them sparingly and appropriately.

How to use emojis to fit your brand 

Every business has a different brand – a different way of saying things (tone of voice) and if you use emojis, they need to fit your brand. For example if your business is fun, bright and colourful, and known for being more lighthearted, you can use the laughing face,😂 heart eyes face,😍 smiley face 😀etc. But if your brand is more serious, you might just want to use a thumbs up or something less ‘in your face’.

Make a list

Now, I love a list and this is going to be a super fun list to compile! Go through all the emojis and make a list of the ones that will fit your brand. You’ll be surprised at what you find that will fit with the products or services your offer. Once you have your list, you can then decide what kind of posts they can be used in. Then you have a stock you can use and you’ll know exactly where and when to use them. For example, if you bake cakes, there are several emojis you could use – if you do events, there’s a party popper emoji. You get the idea!  The main thing is to have fun with them and find ones that shout your brand.

Where else can you use emojis?

Emojis aren’t just for social media posts – you can also use them in your bio to emphasise what you do.

Blog posts

If you write a blog, you can use them in your blog posts – this is something I hadn’t thought about to be honest! Again, it’s about using them sparingly, but they can be great to emphasise a point you’re making.

Email or online newsletter

Also, use them in your email subject lines. There have been several studies done on the use of emojis in email subject lines and open rate. Most saw at least a 56% increase in open rate when an emoji was used in the subject line.

A further study by Econsultancy.com found that using a snowman emoji in the email subject line during the holiday season, increased the open rate by 66%. 🙌

Obviously once again, different emojis will work differently for different businesses, so it’s worth testing them out to see which ones work best for your business.  

🌟Bullet points – so long as the subject you’re talking about isn’t deadly serious, you can use emojis instead of bullet points to highlight the content of each bullet point. This will draw the eye of the reader to each bullet.

🌟In the opening of your email – instead of just saying, ‘Good morning’ or ‘Hello😃’ add a smiley emoji – it can help start the email on a happy, positive note.

🌟Use in blocks of text – if you have a long paragraph where you’re explaining something that could appear dull to the eyes of your readers and you want to make it stand out more, you can use emojis within that text to break it up a bit. Using emojis can make your writing easier to scan and to digest lots of content.

Emojis in close up and sign off – You can use an emoji at the end of your final paragraph, once you’ve summed up the content of your email. For example, ‘I hope this has helped you to understand XXXXXXX. Contact me if you need any further help’.

Also, test this out with different sign offs such as ‘Thank you🙏’ or ‘Kind regards🥰’ adding an emoji after the sign off. Which emoji you use will depend on if the email is fun or more serious.

Conclusion

As a lot of the emojis are the equivalent of human faces, the brain tends to behave the same way as it does when it looks at a real face. And this is why emoji engagement can help your social media posts, blogs or emails. It makes your particular piece more relatable.

Studies have shown that emojis make people feel happy, as it’s unconsciously seen as personal interaction.

Whichever way you look at it, I’ve been surprised by this research and the various studies, but it does make perfect sense. I’ve used too many in this blog post, as I’ve used them for explanation purposes! I hope it’s helped you see how many different ways you can use emojis!

Give it a go – you might have a lovely surprise! I’d love to know how you get on with them.  😘 😘

Hashtags and Facebook

Facebook is getting harder to manage due to the ever-changing algorithms. This makes it really hard for you to make your small businesses visible to your followers if you’re not paying for ads.

One of the ways to help with your organic reach is to use hashtags as they can help you improve your content’s engagement.  

Why do hashtags help small businesses?

Here are four reasons why hashtags are worth the time and effort on Facebook:

  • Posts with hashtags can be found in a Facebook search. We’ve all used the Facebook search to find what we’re looking for – for example I’ve looked for old school friends using the search bar. In the same way, you can search a hashtag. So, using hashtags on your post to make them more visible is going to help your reach.

    Using relevant hashtags will help you with your visibility – for example, a local hashtag such as #scentedcandlesswindon, can help your local visibility for scented candles. Or if you use a hashtag such as #smallbusinessweek2024, someone looking for that could come across your page.

    The people searching hashtags may not all have a genuine interest in your type of business, but if they do, they’re likely to look at your page and content.
  • If you are using other social media channels, such as X or Instagram, and running a particular campaign, or talking about a particular product or service, using hashtags on that channel, add them into your post on Facebook to keep your channels consistent. You can use the hashtag IN the post, not just at the end, so long as it is relevant. For example, if I’m doing a marketing post about Small Business Week, I could incorporate it in my post – ‘Good morning. The week is #smallbusinessweek2024, so today I’m going to talk about …….’ You get the idea.
  • Hashtags can also help to create a community on Facebook. If you share or create a unique hashtag, you can find people who have the same interests or who are in the same group as you.

    Using your own unique branded hashtag on Facebook can also increase the visibility of your business, such as the one I use #cindymobeymarketing (which is also the URL of my website). This also makes it easier for people to find relevant related content.
  • If you host an event or regularly host events, creating a unique hashtag for that event can give people an easy way to stay updated on that event. You can also do posts about the event using your own branded hashtag for your business.   

How do you know which hashtags are good for your posts?  

To decide which hashtags are good to use for your business and your posts, you need to know that it’s relevant and popular before you use it. You can do this by:

  • Checking which hashtags your followers and customers use. This means they will relate to you and if they’re searching a hashtag they regularly use, your content could pop up.
  • Use Facebook’s recommendations – when you are scheduling posts, as soon as you start to type a hashtag, you’ll get a drop down menu that will give you variants of what you’ve typed and the volume for each of those hashtags, so you’ll be able to see which ones are popular – try and use a mix of volumes.  
  • Look at your competitor’s posts on their Facebook business pages and see what hashtags they use. They might have great engagement partly because of the hashtags they use, so you can add some of them to your list. This is not stealing their ideas, it’s just doing competitor analysis, which is all part of social media marketing.

Facebook hashtag best practice

Here are a few extra tips for Facebook hashtag best practice.

  • Use hashtags in sentences. For example, if you were sharing information about an event you’re attending, such as a night market, you’ll be doing a post about that. Instead of writing ‘This weekend you can find us at Makebelievemarket on Saturday #makebelievemarket’ – use the hashtag in the sentence, ‘This weekend you can find us at #makebelievemarket on Saturday. It looks tidier and incorporates the hashtag into your sentence.
  • Don’t use spaces in hashtags. For example, you would use #makebelievemarket – NOT #Make Believe Market – as only the first word after the hashtag will count and it will be a completely different one – and not relevant to what you’re talking about!
  • Don’t use too many hashtags. It is recommended to only use up to five hashtags on Facebook posts. If you have too many, it can confuse the algorithm as hashtags act as keywords to help people discover your posts. Using fewer hashtags is also easier for you analyse which ones work best for you, as not so many to look at.

    That’s not more than five in the whole post, including any you use in the sentences too.
  • Make sure the hashtags you use are relevant to your content and your business. This seems obvious but a lot of people use hashtags for days of the week, for example #throwbackthursday. If your post is about a happy memory or a throwback of a previous product that you remember fondly, it’s relevant. If you’re writing about a new product or something irrelevant, it won’t help you with engagement if your post is found on that hashtag and that person is searching for #throwbackthursday.     
  • Check your privacy settings. If the settings on your Facebook business page is set to followers only, then you’re wasting your time using hashtags, as you need your setting to allow non-followers to view your content. All my settings on my business Facebook page are set to ‘public’ so anyone can see anything I post. Ensure that your posts are ‘public’ too.

    Please note: If you’re using your personal profile page to test your hashtags, you’ll need to make your posts ‘public’ manually.  

Measuring your hashtag use  

You can measure how your hashtags are doing by looking at your ‘Insights’ on Facebook.

  • Go to your insights and click on ‘posts.’
  • You’ll see a breakdown of your engagement rate, type of post and total reach for each post.
  • Now, it won’t give you hashtag performance, so you’ll need to work through your posts and data to find out whether your Facebook posts with hashtags work better than those without (so some testing to do), and over time you’ll be able to see which posts with a particular set of hashtags work better than other sets – again this will be through trial and error, and a bit of insight research

At first you may not see that much difference in results because you won’t have used a particular hashtag enough for it to build a connection between the hashtag and your page/business. This is another reason why fewer hashtags are easier to manage – you won’t know the results if you use shed loads!  

I hope this has helped in understanding how hashtags can work for you and your business on Facebook.  It might seem complicated, but once you get going, it will become second nature.

As always, if you need any help, feel free to message me on Facebook @cindymobeymarketing or email me cindymobey@outlook.com

Other blog posts I’ve written about hashtags include:

Are hashtags still viable in 2024

Hashtags FAQ 

Is your business suffering from the summer slump?

Although the summer is great weather-wise, well….normally (!) and we all look forward to those long lazy days and BBQs, the summer can have an adverse effect on small businesses. You very often see that summer slump in sales, or those wanting to take you up on your services.

The summer slump is a real problem for some businesses, and usually this simply means that time in summer when business seems to drop off. You don’t get so much engagement on your social media pages, sales disappear, and generally, everything seems to grind to a blinding halt. Know that you’re not alone!

The main reason for this is that in general, people just stop paying attention to the things they normally do. The children are off school and need to be entertained, the weather is nicer so they’re thinking about BBQs and social gatherings with family and friends. They are also thinking about going away on holiday, or visiting family for a few days. Add to that the rising cost of living, which is horrendous this year, and you’ll realise the summer slump has been more of a pain than usual!

This year, I’m seeing that small businesses are telling me that they are experiencing a real slump in their sales and really struggling to get engagement on social media.

So, do you just wait for things to pick up by themselves? And they will, once the summer holidays are over, people start thinking about Halloween and Christmas and will start buying again and engaging on social media as the nights draw in. There are still some things you can do to ensure that your business is still being seen.

Here are some things that might help:

Don’t stop doing what you normally do

This seems obvious, but it’s important to still have your business out there. If you post once or twice a day on social media, continue doing that. Be consistent, just like you always have. you can always repurpose that content again later in the year when things pick up.

If you publish a weekly or monthly blog, do it, even if you don’t get much engagement – again, you can always repurpose it later.

If you send out an email newsletter, absolutely still do this. The tips that follow will help you with the sort of things you can talk about. And people still tend to open their emails, even if they let social media slip a bit, so it’s more likely that your newsletter will get read.

Get those updates done!

This is something most of us try to put off, but during a slump, this is the time to get them done. It might be you want to update your logo, or update your website content or shop. You could take some time to plan some future content – maybe your autumn or winter sales and organise your Christmas products or services.

If you have sales material, presentations, case studies, welcome pack, an automated email newsletter, or a website, now is the time to review them and update them, so they are all current and nothing is out of date.

When you have done that, you can do a couple of launch posts to show your new-look website or landing page.

Update your Facebook cover and your profile photo. And spend some time thinking about your brand and how you can better show your brand in your social media posts.

Look at starting a new inbound marketing campaign

What do I mean by this?

Create a new campaign on your social media or email, to attract customers. You do this by tailoring your content to what they need, problems they need to solve, and forms relationships with your followers.

The old way of mass marketing just doesn’t seem to be as effective anymore. Things like pop-up ads and the hard sell are more likely to put people off these days. So, it’s a softer approach you’re after.

Get going with educating your current and potential customers about your products or services. Use email, direct mail, and social media posts/stories/reels/video to teach your audience more about your products or services and how you can help solve some of their problems.

Go ‘live’

Hold a live event or a series of events highlighting what you do best. Include details of your best sellers, and don’t forget to include testimonials or case studies to help you. Success stories always sell.

Focus on your customers

This is a good way to look at how you can serve your existing customers better. Look at whether your customers use your product or service to its full capacity. Look at feedback to find out if there are any needs that your product isn’t meeting that could be tweaked in future. You can do this simply by messaging your customers and asking for their opinion. People like to be involved, so ask if there’s anything you can improve on, or if there is anything you don’t yet provide that you could provide in future.

Ask for referrals

This speaks for itself, but whilst you’re quiet, you can ask for a referral – and maybe offer a discount if the person they recommend buys from you.

Ask for testimonials. You may get regular testimonials, but some people just don’t think to give them, so there’s no harm in asking.

Join a networking group

There are so many groups on social media that you can join. It just takes a little bit of time to engage with the other businesses in the group. Look at other businesses, engage with their posts by commenting. You might find something you’d like to buy. This is a great way to build genuine relationships with other like-minded people.

If you have any local in-person networking events, try to get along and introduce yourself. Face-to-face events are great for networking in real time. Make sure you are armed with a stock of business cards to give out and ensure that you listen to other businesses and what they have to say, as well as talking about your own!

Share your schedule

If you are going on holiday in the summer, tell your clients about it beforehand. Encourage them to place orders before you go, so they get their orders in good time. Scarcity sells, so don’t miss out on this one.

If you know that you have customers who buy Autumn items from you, such as Halloween products, contact them early and show them your range, asking if they’d like to order early to beat the rush.

Invest in you

When your business is quiet, it’s a good time to learn new things or develop new skills. Or, just to brush up on what you already know. Book a coaching session to help you with a specific part of your business, sign up to a few webinars, or look at a short course that will help you grow your business further.

There are lots of free courses out there that you can sign up to – https://www.udemy.com/ is a great place to find free or very reasonably priced online courses.

Conclusion

These are just a few ideas to help you beat that summer slump. Doing some of these things will make you feel more proactive, and you’ll be raring to go once the summer is over and we are into autumn.

I hope that you have a great summer and that the weather improves and stays sunny, so we can enjoy it!

If you have any questions, or would like to speak to me about anything marketing related, you can contact me using the contact form or email me direct at cindymobey@outlook.com

SEO strategy and social media

Using social media to help promote your small business is a given. It is something that businesses automatically know they need to do to be visible online.

What’s the difference between SEO strategy and social media?

SEO (search engine optimization) is a factor in helping your social media strategy, but there is a difference between social media management and SEO. Social media management is about posting, promoting, and optimizing content on your social media channels, whereas SEO strategy is about ensuring that your social media content or website content is more searchable, so when people search particular words or phrases, your business is found.

But they have one thing in common – both require content to attract an audience. Just like email, SEO strategy and Social Media Management are all tools to reach your target audience.

It used to be that that these two things were miles apart, but in 2024 this line is becoming more blurred. With an estimated 4.6 billion people using social media in 2023, (Source – Forbes – https://www.forbes.com/advisor/in/business/social-media-statistics/ ) social media is crucial for businesses and has changed the face of information sharing, communication and audience interaction. Social media is now influencing SEO and is absolutely necessary for a website’s visibility.   

How does SEO and social media link up in 2024?

In 2024 and beyond, it’s going to be all about social media. You’ll have seen businesses that diligently post about their products and services, then they randomly post a funny cat video, and it goes viral and really pushes that brand’s visibility!

I’m not saying you should post funny cat videos (even if I do like them!), but with AI being pushed in our faces and used constantly by some businesses, SEO is not just about catching the attention of your audience or the general public, it’s about impressing those pesky bots too!

HOW DO YOU DO THAT? 

Social media is becoming more acceptable to SEO guidelines as, in 2024, it’s becoming a force that helps influence your website’s search ranking.

If your social media profile is SEO optimized, this helps make your website more visible on search engines. And Facebook and other social media channels ads can also help drive traffic to your website, which helps with visibility, click-through rates, how long people spend on your website etc.

Social Media Shares

This is another example of how the search engines decide on the relevance and quality of your social media content. If your posts get shared, you’re getting more visibility on other peoples’ pages, and this shows search engines that your posts are valuable, engaging, and interesting. Although Google says that it doesn’t consider social shares etc as a direct ranking factor, but a study done by Semrush.com showed that pages with more shares DO rank higher! So, there is a link.

And it’s not just shares – likes and comments on your social media posts are also signals to search engines that a particular business has quality, valuable information to share. The search engine, Bing, are using social media signals increasingly to help them decide the relevance and popularity of a website.

Your Social Media Profile

This is where you can really improve your visibility for search engines. You need to ensure that your social media profile is SEO optimized with relevant keywords in descriptions and bios, as well as ensuring you have a link to your website, blog, or online shop.

How can you optimize your social media for SEO?

  • First, do you have several social media sites…Facebook, X (formally Twitter), Instagram, Pinterest? Make sure that you have a consistent profile image, so you are more recognisable. Complete all the profile or bio section, making sure it is totally relevant to your business, whilst being attractive enough to appeal to your audience. Include a link to your website and, if you have a newsletter sign up page/opt-in or a particular product campaign on the go, you can do a link to that too. If you use a tool called https://linktr.ee/    you can put all your relevant links in the same area. This is a FREE tool, BUT, (there is a but), if you use your linktree link on your social media pages, you will be directing your traffic to that link and not directly to your website, which obviously effects your SEO. And users have to click to linktree, then click to your website, which takes longer. Some people do find this very useful, but I’ve decided to bin it for now and just link directly to my website – and I’ll be monitoring to see if there are any improvements in my website traffic. Watch this space!
  • You hear this all the time, but it is so important…be consistent with your posts and post regular updates. This will be different depending on what social media site you use, for example on X you need to post several times a day, but you don’t necessarily need to do this with Facebook or LinkedIn. So, post according to guidelines for each different site.
  • Create great posts. Use eye-catching images/photos that attract attention, craft a good catchy headline, and actually ASK for a share. This is good optimization, and it has been proven that these techniques work.
  • The question I’ve been asked a lot lately is around the use of hashtags. Can they help with SEO? Hashtags are keywords, so yes, they can help to categorise your content and help social media users find it. But hashtag use can be different on every social media site,
  • Take a good look at your website and ensure that your website content is optimized for social sharing. Here are a few tips to encourage visitors to share your content.
    – Create quality content with a great headline
    – Optimize content keywords
    – Include eye-catching images/photos
    – Make sure you have a call to action
    – Add social media sharing buttons to all your content – if you make it easy for people to share your content, they are more likely to do it.
    – Videos are still huge and get noticed more easily by search bots, so introduce the odd video into your content.
  • Don’t forget about all the above – it’s not enough to do it all and then walk away and leave your sites to their own devices. You need to constantly be there to engage with people who comment on your content – answer any queries, comment on their comments, and respond to any reviews you get. You can also connect with influencers related to your content – like and share their content, make comments on their pages. If you belong to groups relating to your niche, take part in conversations, give advice, answer questions – interact with people. Your responses and interaction help social media algorithms recognise that your content is active, which in turn, improves its reach. And KEEP POSTING – social media moves very quickly and it’s easy for posts to get lost among all the others.

The content you share on social media.

Your content needs to captivate your audience – it’s no longer enough to just constantly sell, sell, sell. Your followers will soon recognise that this is all you do and will either find it boring or will think that you are just interested in selling – not interested in them as a person. People like the personalised approach and that is why some social media pages are more popular than others. They engage, entertain, inspire, and educate their audience. The age old 80/20 rule that I often bang on about is relevant here. 80% of your posts should be in these areas and only 20% of your content in selling your products or services’.

Some of the most captivating posts now seem to be blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts, so if you try and include some of those in your social media posts, it will help with your visibility and popularity. When you post this kind of thing, ensure that you share the links to, for example, your website for blog posts, link to where your podcast or videos are, such as YouTube. These links help improve your traffic and increase your visibility. These are great social signals that let Google know that your social media site’s content is top quality, and therefore can enhance your search rankings.   

Like everything else when running your small business, social media is a crucial part of getting your messages, services, and products out to the masses. It takes time and effort to make it successful but stick with it and it will work.

Now, please share this article if you have found it useful (!) and look at my other blog posts to find more articles to help you market your small business. As always, if you have any questions or need help, just drop me an email or a message on my Facebook page (LINK) and we can arrange a free 30-minute consultation.  

Building your SEO strategy – Part 2 – Creating Content

Creating your SEO content

Following on from my last blog post, Part 1 – Preparing your content, you’ll know about keywords and how to research them and how to research your competitors and the keywords they use.

Now it’s time to put this into practice. By content, I mean anything from website pages to blog posts and even social media posts. In fact, anything that can be found online that someone out there could be searching for. And you’ll be using some of those keywords that you have researched.

  • You can either create something along the same lines as your competitor that is better than they’ve created.
  • Or you can create something completely different.

I prefer the latter and create something completely different – mainly because I know this will make me stand out more, and because I know my audience and know they like the kind of content I writer – in that I try to keep it as straightforward and easy to understand as I can. I write SPECIFICALLY for you – my readers!

How do I know what to write? Because you tell me! I take notice of comments and posts that you put on social media or listen to what you tell me when I speak to you face to face or via messenger. I try and notice the marketing things you’re struggling with, and I ask questions to find out, and often give options, so I know that what I write about will be interesting or helpful to you.

So, let’s make a start with yours…

What is SEO friendly content?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly content is created so that it helps the search engines, such as Google, rank it higher. This doesn’t mean stuffing it to the brim with keywords, it just needs to help search engines find, understand, and connect your content to the right users for the content you’ve written. 

Although keywords are important, you’ve guessed it, there’s much more to it than that! If your content is optimized well, it helps with the user experience and encourages the user to stay on your website or blog for longer, so giving you higher browsing times and engagement rates – and so helping you rank higher on search engines!

How to make your content SEO friendly

Let’s look at some of these in turn…

Create valuable content

This is not necessarily creating what you want to, but creating content that speaks to your reader, content that is valuable to them and caters to their specific needs or questions they’ve asked you.

You may have seen the odd post from me and from others you follow, where a post will simply say – ‘Ask me anything.’ If you post something like this, you will get many random questions, such as ‘what’s your favourite colour?,’ or ‘what music is on your playlist?’

But, you will also get valuable questions about your business, which will give you ideas for social media posts and blog posts – and new ideas for your business, which you will then need to add to your website.

I digress – Google’s algorithms favour this high quality, valuable content, so the more value you provide, the longer people will stay on your website or content.

Example

For example, say you are interested in baking and want to share a recipe for spaghetti bolognaise. The title you’ve chosen is ‘How to make tasty spaghetti bolognaise.’ Now, you will get some people who will click on this but try going for a slightly different angle ‘How to cook authentic Italian spaghetti bolognaise.’

This not only more appealing, but it also gives you options. You could write about the history of that dish, and you may know someone who is Italian who loves to cook, and who would be happy to be interviewed about their particular recipe and how it came to be in existence – it might be an old family recipe they’d be willing to share. This gives a story to your content, which is much more engaging.

Headlines and sub-headers

Headlines and sub-headers are great for SEO optimization. It not only enables your reader to skim your article or webpage, but the sub-headers also help them find what they’re looking for and makes it easier to read. And people tend to share things that are easy to read.

It also helps the search engine bots to recognise headlines and helps them understand more clearly what your content is about.

Having your keyword(s) in your heading or sub-heading also helps – just make sure you don’t stuff so many in that your headings or content becomes less easy to understand or messy.  

The Hook

Whilst I’m on the subject of headings and sub-headings, you also need to think about the ‘hook’ that will draw people into your article.  Using engaging words or numbers in headings has been proven to pull people into an article. So, if you had a title such as, ‘Facts about pasta,’ you could use ‘5 facts about pasta that you didn’t know’. This grabs the attention of the reader and they’re curious about those 5 facts they didn’t know! Just be sure to keep a keyword in there too.

Readability and the format of your content  

SEO is also about keeping the attention of your readers for as long as possible, so make sure the format of your content is easy on the eye. Use images, short paragraphs, bullet-points, and sub-headings so their eyes are drawn to different things. Or, if you’re writing something instructional, set it out in steps to make it easier to follow.

If you use images, optimize them by adding alt text or describe the image. This help with SEO, but also helps people who are sight impaired to understand what your images are. Use a keyword if you can, but it needs to make sense!

Add CTA Buttons

It’s always good to add a CTA (call to action) button too, so your readers know what to do next. This could be in the form of ‘Buy now,’ ‘Learn more,’ or ‘Pop over to my website.’ This makes it easier for readers to take the next step.

Add links

There are different kinds of links you can add to your content – more so for blog posts or webpages.

Backlinks – these are links that send your reader to another article or page on your website that is relevant to the content they’re reading.

External links – these are links to other peoples’ website or content, which is really helpful to ranking your content higher, especially if the links are to high-quality, reputable sites.  

If you quote stats, state where readers can find the source for those stats – usually a link to the relevant research website.

All links give your content credibility with SEO and the better your links, the higher your page will rank in search results.  

Length of your content

Advice about the ‘right’ length of content is something that changes frequently. It used to be that articles of 300 words or less were best, and that the more posts you publish, the more traffic you’d get.

These days, search engines give a higher priority to article that are longer with more quality. So, the latest advice is articles of 1,500+ words and published less often. Apparently, the reason for this is that Google tries to give priority to posts that provide more thorough answers to the questions and searches they get from their users.

You can find out which of your articles get most engagement from your analytics – which are visited the most and which are read for the longest period of time. And you can also see which generate the highest conversions – for example sign ups to your newsletter. This is how you find out what works best for you.

AND finally…

  • Make sure your website is mobile friendly and that the format looks good across all devices.
  • Ensure that your pages load quickly – when people click on your website or blog content, they won’t hang around waiting for it all to load, it needs to be there asap. A good web hosting provider will sort this out.

I hope you’ve found this article useful and not too involved – I’ve tried to keep it as easy to understand as I can.

Good luck with making sure everything you write on your blog or website is SEO friendly and if you need any help, feel free to contact me.

You can also sign up to my newsletter, where you will receive more great marketing tips and get 102 ideas for social media posts.

Sign up to my newsletter

Building your SEO strategy – Part 1

Preparing for your SEO strategy  

Whether you have a small business or are part of a bigger corporate, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a must for your website to help you rank higher on Google and other search engines.

Building your SEO strategy sounds complicated and may make you want to immediately zone out and not read more – but trust me, I’m going to try and keep it simple! It’s really just a plan!

Your SEO strategy is simply the process of organising your website’s content to improve your chances of appearing in search results – a way of maximising your opportunities to get organic traffic from search engine results pages, (SERPs).

Having a strategy or plan, helps you keep on track when you create your content. It helps you see that you need to create content that people are looking for and searching for, rather than creating content you think they’re looking for, or posting what you want to post.

When you just react and post without a plan, your content will appear unorganised and scattered – this is when search engine bots have a problem indexing your site, understanding exactly what you do and therefore, have a problem ranking your pages.

BUT WE CAN FIX THIS! However, as it’s such a big subject, I’m going to do this over a few blog posts, so you don’t feel too overwhelmed!

Steps to helping create an SEO strategy.

Here are few simple steps to follow:

Make a list of keywords.

This is always the first step to take. Use Google search to help you with this. OK, let’s go with an example…

You make candles – you sell them at markets and on your website – and you also use social media. You make all sorts of candles for all sorts of occasions, some standard that people can buy and some bespoke.

Your keyword search starts with Google – type in candles or put the word twice (as I did – candles candles).

Google will then suggest loads of options, such as:

  • Beeswax candles.
  • Votive candles
  • Scented candles
  • Four candles (!!! This made me smile – if you know the Two Ronnies sketch)
  • Birthday candles
  • Cake candles
  • Soy candles
  • Specialist candles
  • Candles near me

You’ll know that these are good keywords to use for SEO as they come straight from Google and so you know this is what people are already searching for.

You will find that short-tail keywords (search words using just one word – such as ‘candle’) are more popular as most people will start with just one word when looking for something specific.

Long-tail keywords (such as ‘candles for special occasions), won’t be as popular in the volume of people looking for them, but they tend to be generally easier to rank for and obviously attract people who are searching for something more specific. 

I’d say type in several different words and short phrases into Google and see what comes up – try and have a list of at least 10 keywords.

You can then check them in a keyword checker (there are some free sites out there, such as  https://www.wordstream.com/keywords or Ubersuggest) which will give you the number of people searching that keyword and whether they’re low, medium or high volume.  

Look at Google’s first page.

Once you’ve got your list of keywords, type them one at a time into Google search and look at the first 10 entries that come up.  This shows you the businesses that currently rank for that keyword, and the kind of thing (maybe a list or a business itself) that people are looking for when using that keyword. Make a note of what comes up in the search and what kind of things, such as lists or blog posts that come up.

Analyse your competitors. 

Most of us will know who our main competitors are, but to find out who Google thinks your competitors are, you can use a free tool, such as Semrush, to help you. You simply type the URL of your website into their search, then click on ‘Domain overview’ and scroll down where you’ll find a further search called ‘Main organic competitors.’ If you click on this and then click on ‘view all,’ you will get loads of information about keywords. It will show a list of all your competitors, plus the most common keywords that you share, as well as telling you how much traffic those keywords pull in.

Where you see a lot of common keywords, you’ll have your list of at least 4-5 competitors.

Keyword gap

You can now use the Semrush ‘Keyword Gap Tool.’

The ‘gap’ refers to the keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but that you’re NOT ranking for.

This tool will help you identify those gaps, so you can then use them on your website or blog, therefore optimising your existing content with those keywords – or creating new pages to use them.

To use this tool, you simply put the URL of your website and then the URLs of four of your competitors and press ‘compare’ and scroll down to ‘all keywords details for…’ and click on the ‘missing’ tab. You’ll get a huge list and then it’s up to you to sort through which of those missing keywords would be relevant to your business and to your website. 

There are lots of other uses that Semrush can help you with in analysing your competitors and your website, so it’s worth going on and having a play – and it’s really interesting!

These are the first few steps for SEO and will help get you prepared to look at your SEO strategy. Next time we’ll look at how to use this new-found knowledge to help you rank on Google.

If this all feels a bit too overwhelming, I can help you with your SEO strategy through 1:1 coaching. Just contact me to find out more.

Pricing for small businesses

Whenever I talk to a small business, pricing is one of the things that most struggle with. But just as you have a strategy for your business, and spend time marketing what you do, having a pricing strategy is just as important.

Pricing can be difficult to get your head around – for example, why are some products worth so much more than others, when they basically offer the same thing?

Settling on a pricing strategy

There are different ways to settle on a pricing strategy that will work for you – and lots of things to take into consideration, such as:

  • Your customer – how much are they willing to pay for your products or services?
  • Your competition – what is your competition charging?
  • Costs – you need to know all your costs in order to be able to fix a price which makes you a profit.

 So, you need to find a pricing strategy that offers good value to your customers, competes with your competitors, and gives you a profit. This isn’t an easy concept to grasp.

Pricing strategies for small businesses

There are loads of pricing strategies out there, but these are just a few that I think are more relevant to the smaller businesses that I interact and work with.

Competitor strategy

If your products are competing with lots of other businesses who do the same as you, competitor pricing or strategy might be the best way to go. First, you need to research your competitors to find out what they charge for similar products to yours, and then monitoring their prices to ensure that your prices are the same or slightly lower.

This is a strategy that is most commonly used by supermarkets.

Penetration pricing

If you’re just starting up, or you have new products that are like your competitors, this is a popular choice. You start by offering a low introductory price for your new product, (or products if you’re just starting) and then gradually increase the price as the market gets used to your brand.

Economy pricing

If you offer low cost, budget products, this is a good pricing strategy. But you MUST ensure that you’re able to produce bulk quantities for a low manufacturing cost and still be able to turn a profit.

Price anchoring

If you sell both premium and budget products, then this may work well for you. You can put your lower-priced alternative next to a similar premium product – customers are more likely to buy the cheaper model. This gives them an immediate comparison without having to look at other brands or businesses.

Psychology pricing

It probably won’t surprise you to know that emotion influences a lot of the things we buy. Psychology pricing is the way that businesses set their prices to influence how customers perceive the value of a product or service.

The typical way of doing this is pricing just below round numbers or choosing prices that make products seem more affordable or attractive. If something is priced at £300 for example, and the same thing is priced by another business at £299, it’s more likely to be bought at the lower cost – although there is only a penny difference in reality.

You also see this in advertising, when you see for example, ‘8 out of 10 cat owners agree that this cat food is the best’. If they said ‘80% of cat owners agree….’, consumers are more likely to think – mmm, well 20% of cat owners didn’t agree, so that’s not good. Saying 8 out of 10 is exactly the same – it just sounds better psychologically.

Another example, and this is a clever one! Two companies are putting out offers on their products. One offers ‘25% off’ and the other company is offering ‘buy one, get the other half price.’

Which would you go for?

In fact, they are both exactly the same. The only difference is that the second offer saves us having to work it out in our heads. And mentioning the word ‘half’ creates an illusion that we are receiving 50% off the original price, but you’re actually getting 25% off each product.

How do I work out the cost of each of my products or services?

Deciding which pricing strategy to go with is all very well, but you also need to ensure that you make a profit on the things you are selling. If you buy products in bulk at a cheaper price and then add what you want to make on top, that’s easy to calculate. But if you make your own products or offer a service it can be a little more complicated.

Products

You need to understand what costs you have.

  • Materials – how much does it cost you to buy the raw materials to make your products?
  • How many products can you make with those raw materials?
  • Utilities – does it cost you money to produce your products (such as electricity to run machines, or maybe you use a lot of printer ink)?
  • Time – how much time does it take you to make one product? This is something small businesses often forget. To price your time, you need to set yourself an hourly rate that you want to earn from your business, and you can then divide that hour into how many products you can make in that time.
  • Packaging and postage – you need to also take this into consideration.  

Once you have all the costs above you can work out the cost of each product.  

I appreciate, as a small business myself, that the price you choose must be what your customers will pay on a consistent basis.

Services

Charging for your services is definitely challenging and one that I’ve struggled with a lot over the years. If your prices are too high, customers won’t come to you – and if your prices are too low, potential clients will think you are cheap or inexperienced. You must find the fine balance between the two.

As with a product business, your costs need to include admin and overhead expenses, as well as any materials you need to provide your service. There is no magic formula! As a service provider, you’ll probably find yourself changing your pricing from time to time, just as you’ll have to change your services to keep up with the latest trends.

  • As a service provider, you MUST know your competition. As well as looking at what they’re charging, it’s important to know exactly what they provide for that cost. You’ll find some that are cheaper than you want to be (but do they have the same experience and skills as you)? You’ll also find those that charge much more than you are expecting, (do they have more experience and skills than you do)? Once you have this info, you’ll have a broad price range to start with.
  • You also need to decide whether you will charge a flat rate or whether you will charge by the hour. This will depend on what services you offer. For example, I charge per hour for the coaching I offer, but for email set-up or social media content creation, I charge a flat rate, which has already considered the amount of time it takes me, plus overheads.  
  • You still need to know how much you expect to earn per hour – that is, how much is an hour of your time worth?

Finally, as a service provider, especially if you’re freelance, it’s worth remembering that you won’t be working a straight 8 –10-hour day and nor will you get paid for all the hours you do. Most freelancers find that only 50% of their time is billable. The other 50% is spent marketing their own business, finding new clients, and doing admin!  

Conclusion

I hope this has helped you see pricing a little more clearly, although I realise it is always going to be a bit of a grey area!

So, to recap, do your research so you know what your competitors do. Take all your costs into account, including your time. Then decide what you’d like to earn per hour and go from there.

If you need any help, as always you can drop me a message. I’m happy to help.

Should I publish my prices online?

It’s a question that I know a lot of people in business struggle with, especially if you offer a service. ‘Should I publish my prices and packages online?’

It’s actually quite a personal decision and you’re not alone in wondering if it’s the right thing to do or not. So, to help you make the right decision for your business, there are a few pros and cons to consider. Hopefully this will help you decide…

Pros of publishing your price list

  • It will cut down the number of emails you get asking you for a price. Therefore, those who do contact you are more likely to be more serious from using your services, or buying your products.
  • You might hear from people who are very excited to find out that you are within their price range, when they thought you would be way out of their reach, financially.
  • This is an important one – customers actually want to know your pricing. I know that in the past, when I’ve been looking to hire someone, I find it very frustrating if there are no prices on their website. Often, I’ll give up and find someone who does. So, transparency plays a huge part in publishing your price list.
  • It might help allay the fear of your inbox! I know the panic feeling when you get an email asking exactly what you charge. You suddenly start overthinking everything! ‘Am I charging too much?’, ‘Am I not charging enough?’ Having your price list on your website says you are sure of your rates and happy to share them.
  • Just as I may go elsewhere if there’s no price on a website I visit, so will other people. By having your prices visible, you may win out against your competitors.
  • When you do get an inquiry, they’ll be less ‘sales patter’ as they’ll already know your prices, so less likely to haggle and more about what you can do for them.
  • Having pricing will keep your bounce rates low and encourage potential customers to stay longer to browse.
  • It can improve your SEO too as words like ‘pricing’, ‘prices’, ‘costs’ are popular google search words.   
  • If you can’t give a set price for all your work, as I can’t with mine, you can simply publish a starting rate. It still gives potential customers a base rate to work from.
  • You may have a customer who, now he knows how much you charge, can save up until he can afford to hire you. This saves him the embarrassment of ringing to ask costs, then having to say he can’t afford it at the moment.   
  • Ultimately you’ll save time and energy!

Cons of publishing your price list

  • If someone comes across your website and they don’t like your prices, they will move on without ever having been in touch, meeting you or getting the chance to interact. It may be a lost opportunity, in that you may have been able to do them a deal.
  • Competitors can see your pricing and they may then choose to undercut your prices.
  • Your website will need to be updated on a regular basis with any new prices, or special offers. You could forget to put your prices up online, and then have to honour the lower price on your website.
  • Having a set price really leaves no room for negotiation and you could lose business because a client may have needed a smaller package than the one you have on offer.
  • Limiting your prices or packages can be hard to do if you are the kind of business that offers bespoke work or services. But there can always be a clause at the bottom of your list for Bespoke Services. You can have a statement that says you also do bespoke work or offer customizable services, and ask them to contact you for more details. This gives the best of both worlds!

My personal preference is to publish my price list on my website. But I do have a clause to say that I also do bespoke work and to contact me for more details. I just know that for me, looking on a website for a price and not finding one, is frustrating and will be sure to have me leaving the site.

Places like Amazon list prices, but someone who sells very high end cars may not. This will, no doubt, ensure that they attract only the target market that they’re after…one that doesn’t have to worry about money, so can easily afford one of their high end cars.

Conclusion

To be brutally honest, there is no real conclusion and only you know what is right for your business. If you sell physical products, I would definitely encourage you to include prices next to everything you sell. But if you’re a service based business, you might find it hard to create a standard price list. You need to look at your target audience and decide what will be best for them.   

Like I said, I have a price list and you can find it on my services page on my website. You might want to swing over and find out how I approached this issue as I provide a service, not physical products.

Please feel free to ask any questions or you can email me in private if you prefer, at cindymobey@outlook.com