Christmas in July: Why creative businesses should start thinking about Christmas now!

Santa Claus in red suit relaxing on beach chair with tropical drink near decorated palm tree

I know what you’re thinking…Christmas? In July? However, I know that a lot of my followers who have small businesses DO get involved in this, so I thought I’d offer a helping hand for a Christmas in July campaign.

For most creative businesses, Christmas isn’t just another season, it’s the biggest sales opportunity of the year. And while December might feel a long way off, your customers are often planning much earlier than you think, especially in these times of economic hardship. The need to spread the cost over several months has become more urgent.

People start creating gift lists early and look out for special offers well before the festive rush begins.

That’s where a Christmas in July campaign comes in.

It’s not about putting up a tree and pretending it’s December – although I know my daughters would love that! It’s about creating excitement, building anticipation, and giving your audience a reason to start thinking about gifts before the Christmas season officially begins.

Better still, it’s a fantastic way to boost engagement during a quieter period, generate sales, and get your Christmas marketing plans moving before the last-minute panic kicks in.

Why run a Christmas in July campaign?

A Christmas in July promotion can help you:

  • Generate sales during a slower season
  • Clear older stock before Christmas collections launch
  • Build excitement around upcoming products
  • Grow your email list
  • Encourage early gift shopping
  • Test Christmas offers before the festive season
  • Increase visibility and engagement on social media

Most people love Christmas and love any excuse to celebrate. I know I do!

Creative Christmas in July promotion ideas

Give slow-moving stock a festive makeover

Do you have products that haven’t had as much attention as you hoped they would – or have a few products left over from a previous campaign? Bundle them together and offer them as a ‘Christmas in July Special’ or create themed gift sets at a special price.

Sometimes all a product needs is a fresh story and a new angle.

Offer Christmas pre-orders

If you already know what products you’ll be launching for Christmas, give your audience an exclusive first look.

Share sneaky peeks, behind-the-scenes photos, or early product samples and invite customers to join a VIP waitlist or pre-order before anyone else.

Create an early bird bonus

Reward customers who shop early.

For example:

  • Free gift wrapping
  • Bonus mini product
  • Exclusive Christmas design
  • Early access to limited editions
  • Free shipping over a certain spend

People love feeling special – don’t we all?

Launch Gift Vouchers

Gift vouchers are one of the easiest ways to generate revenue early.

Position them as:

‘Future Christmas shopping made easy.’

Customers can buy now and decide on the perfect gift later.

Run a festive giveaway

Everyone loves a giveaway.

Ask followers to:

  • Comment with their favourite Christmas movie
  • Tag a friend they’d shop with
  • Share your post to stories
  • Join your email list

The prize could be a Christmas product, a gift bundle, or a shopping voucher.

Host a Christmas in July live event

Go live on Instagram or Facebook and highlight:

  • Bestselling products
  • Christmas previews
  • Gift ideas for different recipients
  • Behind-the-scenes festive preparations

Live video helps customers visualise your products and ask questions in real time. I know a couple of people who do this regularly and it is highly successful for them.

Create stocking filler gift guides

One of the biggest challenges customers face is knowing what to buy.

Create content around:

  • Gifts under £10
  • Gifts for teachers
  • Gifts for colleagues
  • Secret Santa ideas
  • Luxury stocking fillers

The easier you make gift buying, the more likely customers are to purchase.

Don’t forget your email list

Your email subscribers should always get the VIP treatment.

Consider offering:

  • Early access to promotions
  • First look at Christmas collections
  • Exclusive discount codes
  • Waitlist access
  • Subscriber-only giveaways

A Christmas in July campaign is a great excuse to grow your email list before the festive season arrives.

Social Media Tips

Christmas in July works best when it’s fun.

Think tropical Christmas vibes rather than traditional December marketing.

Mix festive elements with summer imagery:

  • Santa in sunglasses on a beach, sipping a cocktail!
  • Christmas cocktails
  • Beach towels and baubles
  • Palm trees with fairy lights
  • Festive backgrounds but in bright summer colours

The contrast is eye-catching and instantly stops people scrolling.

Most importantly, focus on creating conversations rather than constantly selling.

Ask questions, run polls, share behind-the-scenes content, and invite your audience to help choose products, packaging, or Christmas designs.

The goal isn’t just Christmas sales.

The goal is building excitement, gathering future customers, and making sure your business is top of their minds when holiday shopping begins.

Conclusion

Christmas in July isn’t about rushing the festive season.

It’s about giving your audience a reason to engage, shop, and plan ahead.

Whether you’re launching pre-orders, building a waiting list, clearing stock, or simply having some fun on social media, a Christmas in July campaign can help you create momentum long before the Christmas rush begins.

And when December arrives, you’ll be glad you started early.

If you need help with building your Christmas campaign from now onwards, get in touch and we can start preparing an action plan with post ideas and content.

Contact me for a free, no-obligation chat.

CONTACT ME

Why small businesses still need humans in the age of AI

Bookseller handing a book to a customer with AI inventory tablet on desk

Over the last year, I’ve seen so many businesses switching to AI to create images and posts and, more recently, I’ve seen a flood of promises on social media about “AI clones” and how they can fully automate businesses.

We are told AI can:

  • write all your content
  • create your ads
  • make your videos
  • build your courses
  • answer your customers
  • practically run your business while you sleep

For many of us creative business owners, this messaging feels unsettling. So, I thought I’d investigate this and find out more.

If AI can supposedly do everything, where does that leave creativity? Personality? Connection? The human element that makes small businesses special?

As someone who uses AI within my marketing business for research, and to sometimes get something straight in my head, I want to offer a more balanced perspective…because while AI is an incredibly useful tool, there is a real danger in relying on it too heavily.

And ironically, the businesses that will stand out most in the future are likely to be the ones that remain deeply human, as posts and images start to look very similar.

AI is a tool – it’s not a personality!

Let’s be honest – AI can save time.

It can help brainstorm ideas, organise thoughts, repurpose content, improve workflows, and support productivity in ways many small businesses could only dream of a few years ago.

Used properly, AI can be a fantastic assistant. And to me, this is the most important word – assistant!

But an assistant is not the same thing as a business owner, artist, maker, or creative thinker.

AI does not:

  • understand your customers on a personal level
  • know the story behind your products
  • feel passion for your craft
  • build genuine relationships
  • or care about the people it serves

It predicts language based on patterns.

That is very different from human creativity, experience, intuition, and emotional connection.

The risk of overusing AI

The biggest risk right now is not that AI will take over every small business.

The real risk is that businesses begin to sound exactly the same.

We are already seeing:

  • generic captions
  • repetitive blog posts
  • videos with a similar format
  • emotionless websites
  • and content that feels polished but empty

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware when something feels mass-produced or inauthentic.

And for creative businesses especially, authenticity matters.

People do not buy handmade products simply because they need an object.

They buy because:

  • they value the artistic craftsmanship
  • they connect with the maker
  • they appreciate the story
  • they want something personal
  • and they want to support real people

That human connection cannot be automated.

Human-led businesses do still matter

In many ways, the rise of AI is making human-led brands even more valuable.

As the internet becomes saturated with AI-generated content, people are craving:

  • personality
  • honesty
  • behind-the-scenes insight
  • real expertise
  • and genuine interaction

This is where small creative businesses have an enormous advantage.

You already have what AI cannot replicate:

  • your perspective
  • your journey
  • your imperfections
  • your creative process
  • your voice
  • and your relationships with customers

No algorithm can truly duplicate that.

How I Use AI in my business

I use AI in my business every week.

But I do not use it to replace human connection.

I use it to support the parts of business that can otherwise become overwhelming or time-consuming.

AI helps me:

  • organise ideas
  • streamline admin
  • draft starting points
  • improve efficiency
  • and free up more time for strategy, creativity, and client relationships

But every important decision still involves human thinking. I might get the ideas or expand on my own ideas using AI, but the writing part – the part where I talk to my audience (in only the way I can as I know them), is down to me…and yes, it is still time consuming, but I prefer it that way.

Good marketing is not just about producing more content.

It is about:

  • understanding people
  • building trust
  • communicating clearly
  • and creating meaningful connection

Those things need the human element – the empathy, experience, judgment, and emotional intelligence.

So, is the future ‘Human vs AI’?

In my opinion, the future is not about humans competing against AI.

The strongest businesses will likely be the ones that combine:

  • smart systems
  • efficient tools
  • genuine, authentic human relationships

AI can absolutely enhance your creativity, BUT it should never replace it.

It should never turn your business into a faceless automation, producing endless generic content.

It should be to use technology wisely while protecting the heart of your brand. I can’t stress how important this is to small handmade and creative businesses, because people are not just buying your products or services.

They are buying:

  • meaning
  • identity
  • emotion
  • craftsmanship
  • and really importantly, that human connection

In fact, all these things are inherently human!  

Conclusion

If you are feeling anxious about the rise of AI, you are not alone. It’s very worrying to businesses like mine, where the people to whom I offer my services can simply go into AI and produce a post or image. But I maintain that those that use it constantly will soon start to see their audience pull back, because the content will look the same as everyone else’s who use AI.  

Remember – the value of your business and the value of having a real person posting, chatting and being imperfectly perfect doesn’t disappear just because new tools exist.

I believe that businesses who stay their ground, being absolutely authentic, show their genuine creativity and have those genuine human interactions are going to be much more important than AI in the months and years ahead.

So, my advice is – use AI where it helps without taking over your voice.

Save time where you can – that’s something we can all use help with.

But please…don’t lose the very thing that makes your business memorable in the first place…YOU!

As always, if you want to learn new marketing skills from a coach who understands creative businesses, drop me a message or email and we can have a chat.

Contact me for a free consultation

The benefits of a social media marketing challenge and how it’s good for your business

Woman working on laptop with social media icons and strategy notes floating around

We all know that social media can help us attract new customers, build brand awareness, and generate sales, but knowing where to start – or how to stay consistent – can feel overwhelming. How many times have you sat there staring at a blank screen or blank paper?

That’s why social media marketing challenges have become so popular. They provide structure, support, and accountability to help business owners take action and see real results.

Here are some of the biggest benefits of taking part in a social media marketing challenge.

Be clear on what to post

One of the biggest barriers to consistent marketing is not knowing what content to create.

A social media challenge helps remove the guesswork by giving you clear prompts, strategies, and tasks each day. Instead of spending hours wondering what to post, you’ll have a plan that helps you create content that connects with your audience and supports your business goals.

The result? Less stress and more confidence.

Increase your visibility

You can’t attract customers if they don’t know you exist.

Consistent posting helps your business stay visible to both existing followers and potential new customers. A challenge encourages you to show up regularly, increasing the chances of your ideal audience discovering your business.

The more visible you are, the more opportunities you create for conversations, enquiries, and sales.

Build better habits

Successful marketing isn’t about posting perfectly, it’s about showing up consistently.

A challenge helps you develop sustainable habits around content creation and marketing. Over the course of several days, you’ll see how to create content more efficiently and get new ideas on how to make content that will make it easier for you to incorporate it into your routine.

Over the course of the past few years, when I’ve hosted a few challenges, I’m told that it gives businesses a different perspective and helps them see that finding ideas for posts isn’t as difficult as they thought.

Learn what works

Social media trends come and go, but it’s actually the basics of marketing that helps create long-term success.

A challenge can help you create content that engages your audience, builds trust, and encourages action. You’ll see how to use different types of content strategically rather than posting randomly and hoping for the best.

This means you’ll spend less time on ineffective marketing activities and more time doing what delivers results.

Your confidence grows

Many business owners worry about being visible online. They question whether their content is good enough, whether people will engage with it, or whether they’re saying the right things…that old imposter syndrome chestnut!

Taking part in a challenge helps you overcome these doubts by encouraging you to take action every day. As you post, engage, and receive feedback, your confidence naturally grows.

The more you show up, the easier it becomes.

Connect with other businesses 

It can sometimes feel very isolating running a small business. You don’t have the luxury of being in an office where you can bounce ideas off other people. This is the bit I struggled with the most at the beginning.

One of the most valuable aspects of a social media challenge is the opportunity to connect with other business owners who are on a similar journey. Sharing wins, challenges, ideas, and encouragement can make a huge difference to your motivation and progress.

We all have our crowd, those who interact with us regularly. A challenge can help you make new connections, collaborations, and friendships as well as new marketing skills.

Generate leads and sales

Ultimately, marketing should help your business grow.

When you improve your visibility, create stronger content, and build trust with your audience, enquiries and sales often follow. While results vary from business to business, many challenge participants find they attract new followers, increase engagement, generate leads, and make sales during or shortly after the challenge.

The key is taking consistent action and implementing what you learn.

Creating a momentum

Sometimes all you need is a focused period of action to create momentum – I’m not saying this is what everyone needs, but it can help those who do struggle with regularly finding content without struggling.

A challenge gives you a reason to prioritise your marketing and make progress every day. Small actions quickly add up, helping you move from feeling stuck and overwhelmed to feeling motivated and in control of your marketing.

That momentum often continues long after the challenge has ended.

Are you ready?

If you’ve been struggling with your marketing, are fed up with staring at that blank page not sure what to post, or if you want more visibility, a social media marketing challenge could be exactly what you need.

In just a few days, you can gain clarity, confidence, consistency, and see how a planned content strategy can help your business get noticed.

Your audience is out there; they just need to find you! If you’d like to join the 10-day social media marketing challenge starting on 15 June, click on the link below and you’ll get a free PDF that takes you through all the suggested posts and how you can use them for your business for the full 10 days. I’d love to see you there.

Get the PDF now!

How to sell more at craft markets or fairs

Two women smiling at a colorful outdoor handmade crafts stall with woolen items and jewelry

Having a beautiful stall is important, but making sales is what it’s all about when you pay for a stall at a market or fair. It’s much more than just displaying beautiful products, even though this is important!

The most successful sellers know how to create conversations, connect emotionally with customers, and make people feel confident about buying.

Here are some simple but effective ways to sell more at craft fairs and markets.

First Impressions Matter

Customers decide within seconds whether they want to stop at your stall.

Ask yourself:

  • Does your display look welcoming?
  • Can people immediately tell what you sell?
  • Are your prices visible?
  • Is your branding clear?
  • Does your stall feel approachable?

A bright, tidy, uncluttered display instantly feels more professional.

Don’t Hide Behind Your Table

One of the biggest mistakes stallholders make is sitting silently behind their display waiting for customers to speak first.

You don’t need a hard sales pitch, but a friendly greeting goes a long way.

Simple conversation starters work well:

  • “Hi, feel free to have a browse.”
  • “Everything here is handmade by me.”
  • “Those are one of my bestselling items.”

People buy from people — especially at handmade markets.

Tell Stories About Your Products

Stories create emotional connection, and emotional connection helps people buy.

Instead of simply describing what something is, explain:

  • How it was made
  • What inspired it
  • Where the materials came from
  • Why it’s special

For example:

“This jewellery is made using sea glass I collected from the Cornish coast.”

That feels much more personal and memorable than simply saying “sea glass necklace.”

Appeal to the Senses

Whenever possible, encourage customers to interact with your products.

People are more likely to buy when they can:

  • Touch
  • Smell
  • Taste
  • Try
  • Experience

For example:

  • Encourage people to feel soft fabrics
  • Let customers smell candles or soaps
  • Offer food samples if appropriate
  • Display products out of boxes where possible

The more connected people feel to a product, the easier it is for them to imagine owning it.

Offer Lower-Priced Items Too

Not every customer arrives ready to make a large purchase.

Having a few smaller, affordable products can:

  • Encourage impulse buys
  • Attract children and gift shoppers
  • Increase overall sales
  • Introduce new customers to your brand

Often a small first purchase leads to larger future orders.

Make It Easy for Customers to Find You Again

Many people won’t buy immediately.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t interested.

Make it easy for customers to reconnect with your business later by displaying:

  • Your Instagram handle
  • A website QR code
  • An email signup QR code
  • Business cards or thank you cards

Customers often look businesses up online while standing at the stall, so make sure your social media is active and up to date.

Build Repeat Customers

One market sale can become several future sales if you stay connected.

Consider offering:

  • A simple loyalty card
  • A discount for repeat purchases
  • A newsletter signup incentive
  • Early access to new collections
  • Exclusive offers for subscribers

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to encourage repeat business.

Useful tools include Mailchimp, Mailerlite and Substack. I personally use Mailerlite, but some of my clients use Mailchimp. I’ve never used Substack, but it is very popular.

Create Content During the Event

Markets are brilliant opportunities for social media content.

Take photos or short videos of:

  • Your stall setup
  • Your products
  • Busy moments during the day
  • Packaging orders
  • Behind-the-scenes moments

This content helps you continue generating interest and sales long after the event has finished.

Conclusion

Selling successfully at markets isn’t about being pushy. It’s about creating a welcoming experience, telling stories, and helping customers connect emotionally with what you make.

When people enjoy interacting with your stall, they’re far more likely to buy from you — and remember you afterwards. And the more markets you do, the more confident and natural those conversations become.

Good luck and happy selling!

How to prepare for a craft fair or market

People browsing handmade colorful crafts and pottery at an outdoor market stall

Craft fairs and markets can be brilliant opportunities for handmade businesses, but I’m sure you know that simply turning up with a table full of products doesn’t guarantee sales.

The most successful stallholders prepare well before the event, create an inviting display, and make it easy for customers to buy from them.

If you’re planning to sell at markets this year, here are some practical tips to help you feel organised, professional, and ready to make the most of every event.

Choose the Right Event

Before booking every local market you see, take a step back and think carefully about whether the event is the right fit for your business.

The events you attend affect how customers perceive your products. A beautifully handmade brand may struggle at a venue focused mainly on second-hand goods or bargain hunting.

Research the event beforehand:

  • Who usually attends?
  • What kind of products are sold there?
  • Is it aimed at gifts, crafts, food, vintage, or budget shopping?
  • How many stalls are like yours?

A little research can save you money, time, and disappointment.

Plan Your Stock Properly

Nothing makes a stall look less inviting than empty spaces halfway through the day.

Keep a back-up stock, so as your products sell, you can keep replenishing your display so it still looks full and attractive.

A good rule is to bring more stock than you think you’ll need, especially for your bestsellers and lower-priced items.

It’s also worth having products at different price points:

  • Small impulse buys
  • Mid-range gifts
  • A few premium pieces

This gives customers options whatever their budget.

Make Your Stall Look Professional

Before the event, practise setting up your stall at home.

Look at it critically:

  • Is it easy to see what you sell?
  • Are your prices clear?
  • Does it feel cluttered?
  • Is your branding visible?
  • Can customers comfortably browse?

Try standing back and think about how a customer would see it.

Simple, clean displays usually work best.

Make Buying Easy

Customers increasingly expect quick and simple payment options.

Cash is still useful, but many people now pay almost entirely by card or phone – and often prefer contactless.

Consider using a portable card reader such as sumup, squareup or zettle.

Most now support:

  • Contactless payments
  • Apple Pay and Google Pay
  • Digital receipts
  • Payment links
  • QR code payments

And don’t forget:

  • A fully charged phone
  • A power bank
  • A backup internet option or hotspot
  • Plenty of change if you also accept cash

Use QR Codes Around Your Stall

QR codes are one of the easiest ways to connect with customers beyond the market itself.

You can create QR codes that link directly to:

  • Your website or online shop
  • Facebook, Instagram or TikTok
  • Your email newsletter signup
  • Product catalogues
  • Custom order forms

This is especially useful for people who want to “buy later” or follow you after the event.

You can use Canva or qucode-monkey.com

Make sure your QR codes are easy to scan and clearly labelled.

Promote the Event Beforehand

Don’t rely entirely on event organisers to bring customers to you.

In the days leading up to the market:

  • Share the event on social media
  • Add it to your website
  • Post behind-the-scenes setup content
  • Share your stall number or location
  • Remind your email subscribers
  • Encourage followers to visit

Short videos and Reels often perform especially well for market content.

Think About Customer Experience

Small details make a big difference.

Before the event, think about:

  • Packaging and wrapping
  • Clear price labels
  • Business cards or thank you cards
  • Accessibility for children and wheelchair users
  • Weather protection for outdoor events
  • Comfortable clothing and shoes
  • Snacks and drinks for yourself

A calm, organised stallholder creates a much better customer experience than someone stressed and rushing.

Market Day Checklist

Before leaving home, check you have:

  • Stock and backups
  • Card reader and charger
  • QR code signs
  • Price labels
  • Packaging materials
  • Tables (if necessary), tablecloths and displays
  • Business cards
  • Power bank
  • Phone charger
  • Cash and change
  • Water and snacks
  • Weather protection, such as a pop-up gazebo

Conclusion

Selling at markets is about more than simply displaying products.

The most successful stalls combine preparation, presentation, and customer connection.

The easier you make it for people to browse, buy, and stay connected with your business afterwards, the more likely they are to become repeat customers.

And remember — every market is a learning experience. Pay attention to what customers respond to, which products sell best, and what display techniques attract attention.

Small improvements from one event to the next can make a huge difference over time. Good luck and I hope your markets or fairs are hugely successful.

Artificial intelligence – what it is and how it’s used

Although most of us won’t be aware, Artificial Intelligence or AI has been used in day-to-day life for years. Virtual assistants like Siri or Alexa are great examples of AI in practice, supporting humans and making things more convenient.

But when ChatGPT launched, it made AI available to everyone and that’s when people started talking about machine learning and the ethics that brought up. 

This article looks at the basics and throws up quite a few questions!    

What is it?

I’m sure a lot of us have seen futuristic sci-fi films that show AI as sinister robots who become obsessed with getting rid of humanity! It makes for good viewing but isn’t what AI actually is.

AI refers to a machine or computer system’s ability to perform tasks that would normally need human intelligence. It is still guided by humans in that it needs programming for the systems to analyse data, learn by experiences and make smart decisions.

AI has great potential by enabling machines to solve complex problems and think intuitively, which takes it beyond automation.

The ethical question

AI is very powerful as it has the ability to act on vast amounts of data in seconds, but it’s vitally important that it is implemented responsibly – and that’s down to the programming. If AI were trained using date that hadn’t been properly checked and validated, it could replicate harmful biases about race, religion, upbringing, or other human characteristics. This could have disastrous results if that were then used in health, recruitment, or law for example! 

One of the key ethical concerns is around privacy and data protection. AI systems automatically collect data from databases across the world and there is a need to ensure that any personal information is protected and used responsibly. For example, facial recognition technology – often used on our phones or on social media platforms, raises questions about consent and potential misuse.  

Machine learning

Machine learning is about the ability of a computer system to learn from data without being explicitly programmed. A good example is spam filtering in emails – the email platforms can learn which messages are useful and which one could be potential harmful or useless.

Machine learning is all about algorithms, which are trained on massive amounts of data, which they learn to analyse to identify patterns, relationships, and trends. The one you’ll be most familiar with is the social media algorithms, which help the various platforms to push the right kind of ads to the right people, recognise things that go against community standards and ultimately can ban or restrict accounts. As we all know, they don’t always get it right and it can be very frustrating. 

Is AI a good thing?

AI has its place, as it can be used to teach machines to do mundane, boring jobs, such as assembling cars for example. They can do the job more quickly than humans, don’t need to take breaks or have a holiday and as they have no emotion (yet!) they don’t get bored or tired.

The downside is that companies and governments want to use it for lots of other tasks, mainly because it’s cheaper than paying a person, which brings up the ‘machines are going to take over our jobs’ scenario.

The future

It’s inevitable that technology will only advance and it’s increasingly likely that AI will be used in many different fields. But it’s important that it works flawlessly without threatening humans and their fundamental rights.

If we go back to the algorithm example, it’s important that humans still audit them properly to ensure that AI is functioning properly and not learning errors, which often happens with social media.

 It’s likely that AI will take over more tasks in the health and care sector, in education and in business. In my opinion, it just needs to be very closely monitored to ensure that it doesn’t take over peoples’ jobs and livelihoods. And the ethical side definitely needs to have plenty of built in controls to ensure that personal data and privacy is maintained to the highest level.

Ethical marketing – why it matters!

In today’s changing climate, it’s important to keep on top of marketing trends. Ethical marketing is nothing new but has been emerging as a powerful tool for businesses who want to connect with more transparency with their potential customers.

Consumers are much more savvy than they ever were and strong marketing ethics help you build long term trust and loyalty with your customers. Ethical marketing enhances the customer experience and that experience keeps customers coming back time and time again.  

What is ethical marketing?

Ethical marketing is a strategy where businesses promote honesty, transparency, responsibility and fair practices within their marketing activity, showing respect for customer boundaries. As part of this transparency, businesses communicate their ethics in their marketing materials, so they reach their target audience with similar values.

Be transparent

This is so important – it means being clear about your marketing practices, including:

  • How you collect and use customer data, using easy to understand language to explain.
  • Being upfront about your pricing, products/services limitations and terms and conditions.
  • Disclosing any sponsored content and affiliate relationships.
  • Making privacy polices accessible and understandable.

Most of these points should be covered on your website within your terms and conditions or your privacy or cookie policies, which are legal requirements. But it’s also worth sometimes talking about these things in posts.

Although transparency is about being compliant with legal policies, it’s also about treating your customers with respect and being honest.

Honesty

This is all about being truthful in your communications, such as email, blog posts, podcasts or social media posts. Specifically, it should be about:

  • Avoiding misleading claims or information about your products or services
  • Making sure any statistics or research your do is truthful and not manipulated for your own gain.
  • Ensuring that any ads or marketing materials you create represent your products or services accurately and not exaggerated.
  • Acknowledging any mistakes you make and taking responsibility if anything does go wrong.  

 

Social responsibility

This is about how your brand has an impact on society as a whole and how your customers view you and your brand. For example:

  • Considering the environmental impacts of marketing campaigns and business practices.
  • Promoting diversity and inclusion.
  • If you support social causes, do so authentically rather than a ‘tick box’ exercise.
  • Ensure that your marketing activities don’t promote harmful stereotypes or behaviours.

Respect for individual rights

This is about respecting privacy, which I mentioned above. Consumers have the right to control their personal data and decide how it is used by businesses. You must be transparent about this in your privacy policies and other policies on your website – this is a legal requirement of GDPR (General Data Protections Regulations).

You can see a list of my policies at the bottom of my website, if you want to see examples, which gives comprehensive details. It takes a while to get this right, as you can’t copy from anyone else – it’s all bespoke to you and your business and how you do things.

Respect for human dignity

This means avoiding tactics that exploit or manipulate consumers, such as intentional deception. An example could be influencer marketing – some influencers have been criticised for promoting products that they don’t actually use – or for promoting products that could be harmful or unethical. This is seen as a violation of respect for human dignity.

Conclusion

I think that most of the points I’ve talked about in this article are pretty obvious in the great scheme of things. When you market your business most would ensure they don’t harm people or society. And most also know that they are responsible to making sure that their products or services are safe and reliable. But there are businesses out there who don’t do this – sometimes it can be simply they’re not aware of their responsibilities, but it’s up to us all to ensure that our businesses are ethical and promote ethical practices.

Ethical marketing is crucial for building trust and long-term relationships with our customers and potential customers. Businesses and brand that make honesty, transparency and respect for individual rights will not only meet their customer expectations but also set themselves apart from competitors.

Technology is constantly changing. Tools like AI and automation mean that businesses can use technology to maximise customer engagement, craft compelling campaigns and social media posts, blogs etc, and help drive their own business growth. But the rise of these types of technology could be opening the door for unethical practices and behaviour. It’s vitally important for businesses to understand the risks of technology to ensure they don’t fall foul of ethical standards. But I think this might be for another blog post!  

I hope you’ve found this helpful, and as usual, if you need any help with your marketing, feel free to contact me for a free consultation.

The pros and cons of neuromarketing

In my last blog, I talked about neuromarketing, what it is and how it works. So, we know that neuromarketing helps brands to improve customer engagement and enables businesses to personalise experiences and to predict how successful certain marketing campaigns will be. But there are also risks and limitations attached to neuromarketing – obviously, its high cost, but also interpreting the data can be very complicated and there are certain ethical concerns. So, this blog looks at the pros and cons of neuromarketing.  

Everyone tends to focus on the pros, but I wanted to look at both sides of the coin.

The pros of neuromarketing

There are several gaps in traditional marketing and neuromarketing tools can help to cover those, giving a better understanding of consumer behaviour, as well as great insights into why consumers decide to buy one product over another.

Observational research

Neuromarketing data doesn’t just come from information that customers provide via surveys etc, it also provides information from observation, such as facial expressions, eye movements, shifts of the mouse etc. Most of this data comes from the subconscious reactions of the people taking part in the research. Some argue that neuromarketing tells you more about consumers’ true desires and attitudes as opposed to controlled answers to questionnaires.

Emotional measurement

Neuromarketing measures physiological reactions, often related to emotional responses. This gives valuable data about consumer reactions to particular parts of an advertisement or video – and which part provokes a positive reaction or a negative reaction. Then advertising can be tweaked accordingly.

Reliable results

As neuromarketing research reaches the unconscious part of a consumer’s mind, the data provides a better understanding of the process behind automatic reactions. This helps researchers determine more reliable results as their analysis looks more comprehensively at consumers’ decision-making patterns.

Let me explain this a bit simpler – we can all lie consciously, but our brains can’t because we can’t control our subconscious minds. As neuromarketing accesses the unconscious mind, the data is more reliable as they are based on true reactions to products or websites/packaging for example. This information can then be used to improve things to give a better customer experience.  

Conclusion

The advantages of neuromarketing gives:

  • An enhanced understanding of consumers – how people think and feel during decision-making.
  • More customer engagement – More emotionally relevant content creates stronger connections.
  • Better personalisation of products – the insights that neuromarketing gives, help marketers tailor products, services, and content to individual preferences.
  • Helps predict successful marketing campaigns – knowing what makes consumers react positively means that marketers can use that data to ensure that their marketing campaigns perform better.
  • Reduces speculative marketing – more relevant marketing cuts through the general marketing noise so it reaches the right people more quickly.    

The cons of neuromarketing

Concerns about ethics

I think this is the one that bothers me the most. It’s about the ethical question – is neuromarketing getting inside the brain of customers…and is that a good thing?

Some would argue that neuromarketing does things that a good psychologist does – it simply ‘learns’ the behaviour patterns of consumers and the data gives smart outcomes.

Specific skills are needed

Now, no matter how much high-quality data and knowledge you can gain from neuromarketing tools, it’s necessary for someone with a scientific background to help the machines and tools to understand the data.

Technology can be taught to interpret the brainwaves and graphs, but someone still needs to make sense of the statistics and what they mean to specific market research.

Expensive equipment

Neuromarketing equipment used to be expensive, but as technology is developed, it has become more attainable to smaller companies – not quite the tens of thousands it used to cost. However, it’s still a lot of money to have to spend. This must be a consideration.  

Privacy and GDPR

Privacy policies and the General Data Protection Regulations must be considered. Businesses, no matter how big or small have responsibilities around customer data and the more technology you rely on, the higher the risk for leakage of data.

Technology must be robust enough for customers to be able to trust that their personal data is protected, but ultimately, there will be people out there who will attempt to get inside the data (and brains of customers) which interferes with their right to privacy. I know this sounds a little far-fetched, but it’s got to be a consideration.

Conclusion

The disadvantages of neuromarketing does come with its own limitations and strategic risks.

  • The cost – specialised neuromarketing tools and experts make it expensive to run.
  • Ethical concerns – Using brain data brings up issues around privacy and customer manipulation.
  • Complicated analysis – whilst machines can be programmed to look at data, interpreting brain signals still needs advanced knowledge and tools.
  • Not always relevant – results from lab settings don’t always apply to all everyday situations.

So, although neuromarketing is going to become increasingly commonplace, there are still quite a few issues to be ironed out, and it won’t be easily available for all businesses. It can be a very powerful took, but it comes with challenges related to cost, ethics, and interpretation of data.

What do you think?

Neuromarketing and how it works!

Neuromarketing is about using neuroscience to help understand consumer behaviour by studying brain activity, physiological responses and subconscious decision making.

Have you ever wondered what makes you choose one brand over another – even when they seem to be identical? Or why one particular ad you see on TV, on social media, or hear on the radio sticks in your mind for days? The answer to this is about your subconscious thought and subconscious reactions of your brain.

Neuromarketing is a fascinating subject, which attempts to understand how consumers respond to advertising and products. It’s not just about asking people what they think, it about looking directly at brain activity and physiological responses to see what really attracts attention and triggers an emotional connection.

IT’S NOT ABOUT – mind control or finding a magical ‘buy now’ button in your brain. It’s not about manipulating people, but about gaining a clearer understanding about what they really want or need. By scientifically measuring non-conscious responses, brands can build better products, create clearer messaging and design more enjoyable customer experiences.

How does neuromarketing work?

In order to find out how the brain and body reacts when a person is exposed to marketing materials, several studies have been done. The most common method involves volunteer test subjects – and uses electroencephalography (EEG) to measure electrical activity in the brain, which helps identify moments of excitement, focus or even frustration.

Observing facial expressions for emotional responses and biometrics to measure changes in the heart rate or skin response are also tools that are used. Software then helps to analyse the data so that researchers can pinpoint exactly which elements of an ad or product are most impactful.

Traditional market research includes things like focus groups and surveys – these are of course, valuable, BUT they rely on the participants accurately giving their own feelings or intentions. Our decisions are often made based on pre-conceived ideas about certain products – or influenced by friends, family or subconscious emotions or biases.

Neuromarketing captures the reactions that people can’t or don’t consciously articulate. A survey can tell you that a customer LIKED your ad, but neuromarketing can show WHICH SPECIFIC PART of an ad sparked the most emotional engagement. So, gives a deeper understanding.

The ethics

Neuromarketing certainly has many benefits, but the ethics shouldn’t be overlooked. Although there is nothing that currently offers comprehensive neuromarketing regulations, there are ethical guidelines for those that conduct this research.

  • Participants must give their informed consent – which means they must fully understand the purpose of any study they take part in, including the risks and benefits.
  • Privacy and data security is key – participants personal data etc must be completely secure to protect the privacy of participants and compliance with date protection regulations such as the relevant GDPR regulation and other associated laws and regulations according to the country conducting the research.
  • Disclosure and transparency – I find this a bit worrying – while is it not mandatory to disclose specific neuromarketing techniques, such as eye-tracking on a website (I wasn’t aware this was a thing!) the principle of transparency is an ethical one. Brands must consider disclosing to consumers their data collection and research methods, to ensure transparency regarding the purpose and impact of the research. Then consumers can make an informed decision about participation. This means it is important to READ PRIVACY POLICIES on websites, if you suspect that neuromarketing techniques may be used.

This thought suddenly struck me – a lot of our personal devices – phones and tablets – ask for eye recognition. Does that mean that when you look at ads on that device, your responses could be recorded for research purposes? Or am I being paranoid?

Maybe I’m overthinking here! This is the extreme end of neuromarketing, and small businesses obviously would not be able to either afford or manage this kind of research.

So, how can you harness the power of neuromarketing without having a state-of-the-art research techniques and equipment?

Neuromarketing for small businesses

Neuromarketing has thrown up six basic human needs that can help with strategies for businesses.

Certainty – Consumers want to know that they can trust a brand or business. Customers like the assurance of knowing that a particular business delivers on its promises, has transparent messaging and are consistent on caring for its customers.

Variety – They say that variety is the spice of life and consumers like a bit of variety or something unpredictable. Consumers these days go from Facebook to Instagram to TikTok and engage with social media and SMS texting. Using different platforms as a small business gives your customers that variety- you can offer limited time promotions, discounts or deals when they least expect it. It might be you do this on stories only – or on Instagram only. These unexpected things excite and captivate your audience and keep them wanting more.

Significance – I’ve said this loads of times, but your customers – in fact not just customers, all of us, want to feel valued. Several small businesses have specific groups on social media to help make customers feel special, and they help by giving exclusive ‘sneak a peeks’ or offers. You can also make customers feel special by personalising brand stories and rewarding loyal customers with exclusive benefits. It’s this making them feel valued and special that can make your brand stand out in the crowd and lift your brand from good to unforgettable.

Connection – I know – I bang on about this a lot too – but connecting with your audience in a genuine way is what helps a business to thrive and grow. It’s about being transparent, authentic, and sowing that you genuinely care about them Engage with your followers through social media, responding to comments and messages and listen to any suggestions and opinions – or even ask for suggestions and opinions as this also helps them feel valued.   

Growth -Show how your products or services help your customers. You can provide educational content to help customers expand their knowledge and skills or give suggestions for how your products can be used in their homes.

Contribution – This is about how your business is conscious of its footprint in the world and that it matters to you. It might be about your eco-friendly initiatives or how you get involved in a community or charity initiative. Consumers are more likely to support businesses that align with their personal values and what matters to them.   

Conclusion

In my opinion, these are the gentler, more people-friendly ways for small businesses to use neuromarketing. It’s not about manipulating your customers, it’s more about understanding consumer behaviour and what makes people tick. This is a basic marketing strategy, but using some of the research results from more in-depth neuromarketing research can help us understand what and why consumers want to buy. Connecting with customers on an emotional level is key to building lasting brand loyalty and knowing what resonates with them helps them come back for more and give you repeat business

Contact me if you need help with your marketing.

Contact me

Into the hashtag void – the shift to social SEO

I’ve been seeing this title ‘Hashtags are dead’ for a while now. It’s not strictly true. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, has said that hashtags no longer have an impact on your reach. But they do still help to categorise your posts so you can use them to find like minded businesses, peers or competitors (e.g. #marketing coach in my case). But, they no longer push your posts to increase your reach and no longer drive social growth like they used to. They don’t boost discovery…they now function more like a label. They help platforms and algorithms categorise your content and give it context, making it more discoverable in search results. 

It’s now more about prioritising SEO (search engine optimization.) I know…this makes many people immediately switch off, but bear with me and I’ll try and make this much easier to understand. 

Why bother to use hashtags in 2026

Categorise your content

Hashtags still help platforms categorise your posts and tell the algorithm what your content says….e.g. This post is about marketing tips for small businesses, or This post is giving Easter gift ideas. 

SEO – hashtags as keywords

Hashtags are now acting more like searchable keywords, so this is worth thinking about. Focus on what your audience is searching for. For example, someone might be looking for a special gift for a relative who likes gardening. So, they type in ‘gift ideas for gardeners’ 

Your post appears because you used #giftsforgardeners and #gardeninggifts. 

Your hashtag strategy needs to focus on what your audience is searching for! It’s also worth including a couple of hashtags within your actual caption, as well as a couple at the bottom. 

Target your audience

As per my previous point, you want your hashtags to reach your target audience. You want to reach those that are interested in and care about your products or services. 

If you’re not sure what your audience search for, ask them! Publish a post asking what people would search for if looking for your type of product or service. You can then type this into a search engine, such as Google, and you will get loads more suggestions that people also search for. 

You can also ask AI, by typing in ‘I am a (what you do), I help (target audience), with (their problems or pain points). What SEO keywords should I use on Instagram? You can ask the same question for other platforms such as Facebook, TikTok etc. 

Then it’s about finding which ones work best for you. 

Longevity 

If you use the right hashtags that are relevant to your content and your audience, your posts stay searchable for longer. A well optimised post can appear in searches for weeks or even months, giving your content long lasting results. 

Hashtags by platform

Instagram

Instagram likes to see hashtags for engagement.

  • Use up to five, including location (if a local business), your business, industry specific and content specific.
  • Put a couple in your caption as part of the wording.

Instagram wants more than hashtags. It wants strong hooks, saves, shares and consistent posting. If your content is weak, hashtags won’t help at all. 

Facebook 

Facebook doesn’t advise more than five hashtags, but the very latest I’ve seen is a maximum of three! I’ve just found this information whilst researching this article! 

  • Use a maximum of three hashtags
  • Use content related hashtags, location tag (if a local business), your own brand hashtags, or industry hashtag.
  • Mix and match the hashtags dependent on your content. 
  • Include in caption and/or at the bottom of post.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn hashtags are mainly for topic classification. 

  • Use two to three hashtags
  • Use one broad topic and one of two more niche or relevant hashtags 
  • Put hashtags at the end of the post

B2B brand hashtags help align your content with conversations already happening on the platform. Reach is driven by relevance and engagement, not hashtag volume.

TikTok

TikTok’s algorithm is largely based on behaviour. It prioritises watch behaviour, such as how long someone watches a video, if it’s watched to the end or just a second or two. Hashtags help confirm what the video is about, but it’s the video itself that is more important.n

  • Use two to four hashtags
  • Avoid chasing trends unless it aligns with your brand
  • Mix up content topics 

X (formerly Twitter)

It’s more about readability. Too many hashtags reduce engagement. 

  • Only use one or two hashtags
  • Keep them relevant and intentional or don’t bother! 

YouTube

Hashtags should be minimal. Titles, thumbnails and watch time have far more impact on reach than hashtags.

  • Use one to three hashtags.
  • Add them in the description, not the title or at the end.

In conclusion, hashtags haven’t disappeared and aren’t dead, but they aren’t working in the way many of us expect them to.

The old mindset of packing in as many as you can is no longer relevant. In 2026, they play a much quieter role. They help the algorithm recognise your brand helping it get discovered and categorises your content. But they no longer drive growth or expand your reach. It’s more about using hashtags strategically for SEO and keywords. 

Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you need help with your SEO or hashtag strategy, contact me for a free initial consultation. 

8 reasons why you need a marketing plan

A marketing plan helps you develop your products and services that will meet the needs and wants of your target market. Marketing helps your customers see and understand why your products/services are better than or different from those offered by your competitors.

Having a marketing plan helps you:

  • define your target market and why they need your product or service
  • decide on the messages, channels, tools and activities you’ll use to reach your target customers
  • set goals and time frames for marketing activities
  • set up a marketing budget
  • evaluate if your marketing activities were successful.
  1. Why do you need marketing?

Marketing is what builds the relationship between you, your business and your customers. If you are a small business, it is vital to build a sound relationship of trust and understanding with your customer. This makes them loyal to you and your brand and loyal customers will not only give you repeat business, they will have enough confidence in you to try out new products or services. They will also recommend you to their friends and family.

Marketing also massively increases the visibility of your brand, so you are more easily recognisable.

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  1. Identify your target market

How do you identify your target market? Take a look at your existing regular customers. Who are they? What are they interested in? What are their problems that you can solve? What other needs do they have?

For example, if you sell baby products, your target market will be parents, parents to be, grandparents etc. You could also target baby shower events and children’s events; childminders; nurseries; soft-play areas; local Mum and baby groups; exercise classes for Mums to be or Mum and baby classes. The list is endless.

Have a look at your competitors – how do they meet the needs of your target market? How can you do it better?

  1. Conduct a SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for internal Strengths and Weaknesses, and external Opportunities and Threats. Pulling together a SWOT analysis can help you analyse where your business, its products/services, fit within the market and looks at your unique selling position. It can also help you find out how you can improve your business; what you’re really good at and what other businesses do.

Strengths – what do you do well in your business? What do you do better than your competitors?

Weaknesses – What do you need to improve on to remain competitive? What do your competitors do better than you? What is holding you back?

Opportunities – What current trends could lead your business to have increased sales? What can you use to your best advantage?

Threats – What could harm your business? What are the advantages that your competitors have over your business?

I have a FREE worksheet that you can download to help you…Conduct a SWOT Analysis 

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  1. Look at your competitors

List your competitors – who are they? If you analyse your competitors, you can find out how they work, what they do and compare them to your business.

What products or services do they sell?

Do they offer a similar product or service to you?

What do they offer their customers?

What do they do to engage with their customers?

Where are they? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

How do they market their products/services…e.g. social media, advertising etc.

The more information you can get about your competitors, the more chance you have of identifying where you fit into the market place and what opportunities are available to you.

  1. Decide on your goals

Once you know where your business stands in the market place and who your competitors are, you can decide what goals you want to set for your business. What do you want to achieve over the next 12 months?

Make your goals specific – instead of saying, ‘I want to sell more products’, look at your products and decide exactly how much more you want to sell. They might come under different categories. Go back to the baby product scenario…you might sell baby massage products, so a goal could be ‘Increase sales of baby massage products by 20% compared to last year’. You then have a definite goal to aim for…and it’s easier to review every few months because you calculate if you are on track to achieve your goal.

Aim for 4-6 short term goals – things that are fairly easy to achieve. You can always add more throughout the year if you achieve them.

Aim for 2-4 long term goals – things that are a bit more challenging. If you find that one of these goals is too challenging part way through the year, you can always break it down into smaller, more achievable chunks. 

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  1. Set your marketing strategies

Once you have set your goals, you can start looking at the short term goals in more detail. What activity is going to help you achieve that goal? What price or process will help you achieve your goals?

When you are trying to decide on which activities to use, choose those that best suit your business and your customers. For example, an advert in a local magazine or newspaper won’t necessarily reach your target market if they are primarily young adults, who generally don’t read this kind of thing. It’s a good idea to go for a few activities that complement each other. For example if your products/services can be for any age, you might go for an advert in a magazine, but also use social media or maybe local radio. You might sell your products at a market or craft fayre, so advertise the event on social media and do links to your products.

  1. Set your budget

It’s important to know how much you can afford to spend on marketing as not all marketing is free. You need to think hard about how best to spend that budget so you get the maximum benefit. Only spend on your current marketing goals, so that budget is used to help you achieve those goals. Advertising on Facebook, Instagram or in magazines all come at a cost, but if you are reaching your target customers, it will be worth it.     

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  1. Ensure your marketing plan is kept up to date

Reviewing your marketing plan on a regular basis is very important so that you not only know if you are on track to achieve your goals, you might also identify new trends in the market that means you have to tweak a particular goal.

It also serves the purpose of scrapping anything that you know isn’t working or changing a goal if you need to.

Looking at your plan helps you to measure how you’re doing against your plan and whether you will be successful.

Now you know why it’s so important to have a marketing plan, it’s time to jump into action!

If you find planning your marketing overwhelming, I can help you. Simply message me for a free 30 minute consultation.

Contact me

Why a simple ‘thank you’ is so good for business

As a parent, I always taught my children that manners cost nothing. If someone gave them a gift, or opened a door for them, saved them a space in a queue, gave them a lift home or did anything for them, they always said ‘thank you’. I was often praised for the well-mannered, polite children I had….and believe me, at home they weren’t always well-behaved, but they always remembered their manners. As adults, I’ve heard them use the ‘manners cost nothing’ statement to their children. It always make me smile.

At some point in our lives, we all work in some capacity. No matter what job you have or have had in the past, it’s always a good feeling to be appreciated for what you do. When your employer thanks you for your hard work, or tells you you’ve done a great job on a particular project, it gives you what one of the teachers at my kid’s school called, ‘a warm fuzzy’ feeling. And how did that feel? Did it motivate you to try even harder? Did it make you feel proud of your achievement and make you want to do more? In one way or another, the answer is usually ‘yes’ to these questions.

The same applies to your customers – if you thank them for buying from you, or using a service you provide, it will make them feel valued and, nine times out of ten, a customer who feels valued will return with more custom, or recommend you to their friends. Either way, it’s a win, win situation for you.

These are some of the benefits of saying thank you…

  • Customers remember who thanks them (and who doesn’t)!
  • Customers feel valued and appreciated
  • Customers feel respected and cared for
  • Customers like to be acknowledged – it’s important to them

It’s crucial that when you say thank you, make sure you mean it – don’t just say it as a matter of course, or as a way to get something from someone. It must be sincere.

So, how can you thank a customer?

There are several different ways to thank your customers.

You should always thank them for their order and for choosing to shop with you, or use your service. You could also take the opportunity to say that if there is anything else you can help with, please feel free to contact you. It’s also a good idea to put a link to your website and invite them to leave a positive comment.

  • Include a note with their order
  • Send an email
  • Send a card in the post, or an e-card
  • By telephone
  • By text message
  • Via messenger or Whatsapp

Finally, the most important thing about thanking a customer is that it is timely….it’s no good saying thank you weeks after the event, it needs to be immediate.

According to Chris Philippi, President of Philippi Marketing and Associates, writing for zeromillion.com, the top Entrepreneurship Resource Online….

  • It costs anywhere from 5 to 8 times more to gain a new customer as opposed to retaining your customers. When you consider the cost of sales people, advertising, Internet marketing, etc. to attract new customers this becomes obvious
  • 68% of customers will stop using your services or fail to return if they feel unappreciated. This is the number one reason businesses lose customers. 

What do you do to make your customers feel appreciated and valued?

How to make customer feedback work for you

What do you do when you get a fabulous comment or review about your product or service? Do you just say thank you with lots of hearts, or tell them you’re over the moon that they love your products or services? I suspect that most of us do exactly that. But, if you then do nothing else…because you got a good review…you could be missing important information that could help you grow your business even more, with advocates who love what you do.

What is customer feedback?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably the owner of a small business. You give your all to your business…your time, your energy, and a big part of you personally goes into making your business a success. You do this to ultimately make money from your business, but you also want to have happy customers who believe in what you do and love your products or services.

Customer feedback is the information that your customers give telling you if they are happy with what you provide. It could also be about your customer service. It’s their opinion, a snapshot in time, of the experience they’ve had in their dealings with you or your business.

  • Does getting good customer feedback make you feel good?
  • Do you take it personally if you don’t get a 5-star rating?
  • Do you see positive feedback as confirmation that your products/services are great?

I’m betting that you answered ‘yes’ to these questions. Getting a fabulous review makes all of us feel good, and the positive feedback shows that you are doing something right with your products or services. And, let’s face it, we all hate getting negative feedback, and it’s easy to take it personally if you don’t get a 5-star rating every time, but it does happen. You shouldn’t see it as a reflection of you as a person, it’s just that a particular customer didn’t feel that a 5-star rating was right. Hold that thought!

Customer feedback

Why is customer feedback important?

If some of the big companies who receive 5-star reviews were happy with that and left it at that, they would never progress their company. But they don’t do that…

Customer opinion is a great resource and gives the perfect excuse to find ways to improve the customer experience. You can collect information in many ways, from surveys (which is prompted feedback), to reviews that your customers post online (unprompted feedback). Both are important in seeing the bigger picture on how your customers perceive your brand. Big companies consistently listen to their customers – they don’t just look at the opinions that their clients leave online, or publish on social media/websites, they are also proactive in asking for feedback, by asking specific questions. If you want to stay at the top and consistently be ahead of your competition, you should always take feedback as a gift – prompted or unprompted, positive, or negative.

So, what does customer feedback give you?

  • It helps you improve your products and services. Whenever you launch something new, its success will be decided by your customers, as they are the ones who will be using it. They are in the perfect place to let you know about the quality, usefulness, aesthetic etc. They can also advise of any improvements they’d make, or how it could better meet their needs.
  • It tells you a lot about customer satisfaction. Feedback tells you about how they feel about your business. If you ask for feedback, yes, you could be inviting some negativity, but that’s not a bad thing, as you can work to improve it. For example, if you are in a restaurant and you’re not happy with a particular meal, or part of a meal, the restaurant would want you to tell them. Why? So, they can improve. If you don’t say anything, but just never come back, they don’t have that chance to put it right and make it better for other diners in the future. That’s why a lot of restaurants ask for feedback on their websites.
    You don’t have to conduct massive surveys; you can simply take a random sample of your customers and speak to them on the phone.
  • Your customers will feel valued. Following on from the last point, if you ask your customers for feedback, they will feel like you care about what they think, and they’ll feel involved. If you show that you genuinely care and value their opinion, they are more likely to give good feedback and to recommend you to their family and friends. Even a customer who complains can be turned into a loyal advocate if you take the time to speak to them about their concerns and come up with a solution…sometimes they’re not even complaining, they just have a suggestion, which may actually help you. They will feel involved if you take their suggestion and implement it!
  • It helps you provide a better customer service. There are times when, through no fault of your own, things go wrong. For example, a delivery is late arriving, or maybe the orders have got a bit mixed up and they receive the wrong order. These things can happen, we’re all human!
    If you have something in place, whereby customers can easily contact you to discuss their problems, it’s more likely you’ll be able to resolve it. The quicker you respond to a complaint, no matter how small, the more likely you’ll be able to earn loyalty in the future. Don’t take it personally – this is a hard one, but I really can’t reiterate this enough. A customer has a right to tell you about their problem, and nine times out of ten it can be resolved easily. However, of course, there will be the odd time that something can’t be resolved, and if it can’t, it’s best to say so, offer a refund or an alternative, and move on. But this is extremely rare.
  • It helps you retain your existing customers. Caring, listening, showing you value opinions, and being genuine with your customers are all things that will encourage them to stay loyal to you. As they get to know you, your business, and your brand, they will understand what you stand for and what you believe in. They will be able to relate to you and will trust you – these are the things that will make a customer stay loyal to a brand.
  • Helps gain more customers. Someone who buys online will have looked at many other businesses before they decide to buy. None of us automatically buy from every business we come across, and we don’t tend to buy from businesses we have never heard of. 90% of online shoppers read online reviews before buying. This is where feedback is crucial. Word of mouth is also seriously underrated. People will buy from a business that has been recommended to them by a family member or from friends. If you don’t encourage reviews, you are shutting the door to new business, so make it easy for customers to leave a review. It’s important for new visitors to see what others have to say – and to see how you respond to your customers, so ALWAYS reply.
  • Helps you with your future strategies. If you know your customers, know what they like and dislike, you are in a much better position to make plans for the future of your business. Feedback helps you know where you can improve, what kind of products or services are popular, and what they might like to see from you in the future. This can only be a good thing.

Conclusion

Customer feedback is an important resource for all businesses, no matter how big or small. It measures the success of your products or services, and can help you develop new products or services, as well as helping you decide on new strategies for your future.

You can collect customer feedback via your online shop, your website, through social media, sending surveys, through a live chat or via messenger, or by simply picking up the phone and speaking to them – you could even do this via video chat.    

Don’t take things personally if you get a little negativity – see it as an opportunity to turn things around and make that customer your biggest fan.

Listen to your customers, make them feel that their opinions matter and don’t be afraid to ask them questions about your business. It can only help you improve, and ultimately will result in loyal customers who trust and believe in you, your business, and your brand.

Last minute Christmas marketing ideas for small businesses

This year has flown by so quickly and once again we are nearing December and hopefully sales are ramping up as we get nearer to the big day.

If things are slower than you’d like or you just want to do that final big push, here are some last-minute marketing ideas for small businesses.

Website

  • Optimise your website for Christmas – think about making your homepage instantly festive. Christmassy themed images are great for attracting attention to your page and gives your customers a more magical experience, putting them in that emotional Christmas mood.
  • If you have any special deals, add a festive banner advertising that on your page. Give cut off dates for orders and where you can, dates that orders are likely to be delivered. This gives customers confidence in your brand and customer service.
  • Make sure that your website can manage the extra traffic, so it doesn’t slow down or freeze.
  • Ensure your website is easy to navigate and that the checkout process is quick and easy.
  • Maybe include a gift guide to make things even more easy for potential customers.

Do you have Christmas bundles available?

If you do, make sure they are very well publicised. You can use social media, using video or eye-catching images to draw customers in. And if you do a bundle as an offer, with a discount for buying things together, highlight the saving – everyone loves a bargain!

If you have a website, think about using a pop-up box highlighting your special offers or bundles.

Don’t forget the upsell or cross-sell. For example, if someone chooses a particular product, have a ‘other people that bought this, also bought this. Or ‘if you like this product, you might also be interested in this complementary product.’

Gift guide

Make a festive video showcasing your gift ideas in one place, or have a gift guide on your website, so people can see immediately what you have on offer.

You could include examples of how your products are packaged, or you could show a packing or unpacking excerpt.

Online Christmas markets

If you add your products to online Christmas markets, don’t forget to advertise this on your social media or email marketing.

Christmas market events

The same applies to events you are going to attend with your products. Make sure you advertise that you’ll be there, share a poster on your social media, or give a sneaky peek at some of the products you’ll be showing.

You can set up an event on Facebook to advertise and if you have a Google business profile, don’t forget to put a post and photos there too, as this is aimed at your local target market.

Collaborate

Christmas is the ideal time to do collaborations with other businesses that sell complementary products. You can team up to produce a bundle, which will benefit both of you. You will also both advertise it, so you’ll reach not just your audience, but also theirs!

Gift cards

Gift cards are perfect for some last-minute shoppers. They can simply buy a gift card for your products and give to a friend or family member, so they can choose what they’d like for themselves.

Out of stock

If you have popular items that go out of stock, then create more, make sure you advertise this, so those who have seen they’re out of stock can now buy them. This is often overlooked!

Gift suggestions by price range

This can be very popular. People like to be given ideas and if you categorise your products into price range, it can make it easier for those who have a specific budget in mind. For example, ‘Under a tenner,’ £10-£25 etc. Anything you can do to make the choosing process easier is a winner.

Pay in instalments

If you offer the service where customers can pay over three payments or similar, it may encourage them to spend more as they can spread the cost. It’s worth thinking about and advertising.

Finally, ensure that your customers know when you’re open, so share your Christmas opening hours. Be clear on the last date to order to get in time for Christmas and wherever possible, an idea of when your product will be delivered.

I hope this has helped and remember, buying at Christmas is all about the customer experience, so make sure that your customers get the best experience possible.

Spread the festive cheer and enjoy these last few weeks before the big day!

To HASHTAG or not to HASHTAG – that is the question!

The hashtag symbol has been around on social media for more than 20 years and there have been many guidelines out there – use 30 per post – now only use 10 per post etc.

The great hashtag debate has been a hot topic this year for marketers, as well for small businesses and answers vary depending on who you ask. But my research shows that they’re not dead yet, but you need to use them more strategically.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to talk about Instagram and Facebook.

What is a hashtag?

Originally they were used to help filter and organise conversations on Twitter, but over the past several years, Instagram and then Facebook have adopted them to help businesses to be seen and found on search engines.

Hashtags are words, phrases, or even numbers following the hashtag (#) symbol. They’re metadata tag operators (which is just a keyword or term assigned to a piece of information online) that categorize and track content on social media. That word or phrase is seen as a category for search engines.

They make it easier for your posts to be discovered by users who are searching for a specific topic, even if those people don’t follow you.

How do they work?

Primarily, they work by grouping and connecting to a post shared on social media. For example…

I often use the hashtag, #smallbizmarketingtips when I post on social media. I’m a marketing coach and content creator helping small businesses. So, this hashtag is relevant to my business. I often post tips for small businesses to help them with their marketing. Using this hashtag does what it says on the tin – it marks that particular post into the #smallbizmarketingtips category.

Not only does it categorise my content, so that when someone searches for #smallbizmarketingtips, my posts are often included under that hashtag. As hashtags are clickable for users, it also helps individuals find an array of tips from lots of different marketing businesses.

In a nutshell, a hashtag helps social media users connect with other businesses over specific topics and popular content – and acts as an invitation to discuss, view and engage with all sorts of content online.

Are hashtags dead?

Over the past couple of years, you’ll probably have noticed that businesses are using hashtags less. But that doesn’t mean that they’re dead!

The stats still show they work – for example ‘Instagram posts that include at least one hashtag gets an average of 29% more interactions for accounts that have less than 1000 followers.

For small businesses of all sizes in 2025, the hashtag is not a necessity, BUT it is a worth it from a marketing strategy point of view.

What are the benefits of using hashtags in 2025?

  • Increased reach – adding a relevant hashtag or two allows your post to be discovered by people who DO NOT follow you. This is useful to help you gain more followers who are interested in what you post. Stat – Social media posts with hashtags boost the engagement of your audience by about 12.6%. It’s not a lot, but surely it’s worth it for any increase in engagement!
  • Building your community – social media is exactly what it says on the tin – it’s about being sociable! Hashtags can help you build a community of like-minded people who can relate to your content.
  • SEO – hashtags and SEO go hand in hand. They both use relevant words and phrases (keywords) to help your business be seen by more people. Hashtags improve your chances of being searched and found! Stat – 61% of social media users turn to Instagram and other platforms to find their next purchase.

So, hashtags are still viable, but it is advised to only use 3-5 on a post. They work – BUT only as part of a content strategy, where you can use hashtags and SEO to your advantage for your brand and for your business.

The other thing to be aware of is that you can be shadow banned by social media sites if you use too many or irrelevant hashtags in your post. The reason for this is because the social media platform thinks you’re a bot or spam account.

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.
  • If you can, keep up with trending hashtags – you’d need to search to find out which ones are trending at any given time as they change regularly! Believe it or not, but trends play a huge role in social media algorithms.
  • Just like you keep an eye on your insights on social media and monitor your website/email stats, it’s a good idea to monitor your hashtag usage too. Keep an eye on which hashtags are getting you the most reach and attracting the right people to your business.
  • Create your own hashtag – this helps you build a connection with your business and followers. Not only can you use it, but your followers can too.
  • Hashtags are both words and phrases – just keep an eye on the length of any phrases you use. Just as long-tail keywords can be more beneficial to your SEO, longer hashtags tend to be better than shorter ones. Stat – Hashtags with 21-24 characters do better than those with more or less characters and create a less competitive space.  

Hashtag best practice – a few extra tips!

  • 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!
  • 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 are 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!  

If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty of your hashtags, there are hashtag tools out there specifically for measurement purposes, which obviously come at a cost. I can’t recommend any particular tool as I don’t use them myself, but if you search hashtag measurement tools, you’ll get lots to look at!  

I hope this has helped in understanding how hashtags can work for you and your business. 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

Why is it important to understand your target audience?

You have a small business, you write beautifully crafted content, you engage on social media – but you’re still not selling. Why?

When you have a business, the ultimate decision about whether they are going to buy from you or not lies with your customers or potential customers. You can do as much as you possibly can to persuade people to buy your products or services, but without a strategy that provides personalised experiences for your ideal customer, you’re not likely to make many sales.

When you know who your target audience is and have a comprehensive understanding of who you’re talking to, you can create the right kind of content to attract that target audience. By having your own small business, you are competing with hundreds of other businesses who do the same as you, so having a marketing strategy is imperative to stopping your messages falling on deaf ears!

Why does your target audience matter?

I’d say that knowing your target audience is the most important part of your marketing strategy, for these reasons:

  • If you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one. You don’t want to appeal generally to everyone out there, you need to appeal strongly to a specific group of people who are likely to want to do business with you…people you have a connection with.
  • If you know exactly who your audience are, you know what their pain points, or problems are. You can see their problems from their perspective and what obstacles they need to overcome to solve those problems. Then you can think about how your business can provide those solutions with your products or services.
  • Knowing your audience’s problems, you can work out how to market the solutions you have to their problems. You can show them how the features and benefits of your products/services can help them and why you are best suited to do that.
  • When you are creating content and forming new relationships with potential customers, you need to be able to speak their language. By this, I mean using the same terms and phrases that they use to describe their problems. Then you can build relationships by using that language to show that your business can solve those problems.
  • You target audience can also teach you how you can create better products and services that suit them best. You can use the understanding you have of their problems, along with any feedback

How do you identify your target audience?

Identifying your target market is all about three things: Demographics, Geographics and Psychographics. 

Demographics

  • What is their age and gender?
  • Are they married or living together?
  • Do they have children?
  • What do they do for a living?
  • If you know what they do for a living, what is their rough income?
  • Do they own their own home?


You can usually gain demographic information from your existing customers by simply talking to them. Social media accounts can also give you relevant demographic information. If your customers are on Facebook, for example, you can usually see information like date of birth, relationship status – people seem to love to share about their lives on social media, so you will probably see if they have children or grandchildren, what they do for a living etc.

  • You could also get this information from feedback you get. For example, if you make and produce quality rag dolls, you may have feedback that says, “Love your product, my daughter/grand-daughter loves her doll and hasn’t put it down since she received it.”  This tells you that your customer is a Mum and Grandma and that she likes buying things for her grandchildren.
  • Knowing the demographics of your existing customers makes it easier to tailor your marketing accordingly.
  • If you’re not sure who your target market it, go to Google and research some of your competitors, people who do the same as you, and look at their marketing techniques. Who are they targeting and how? What are the messages they are sending out? What images do they use? What media do they use to advertise? You will then have an idea of what direction you should be aiming for with your business. 

Geographics

This is the simplest – where do your target market live? Are they local to you? Just in a particular region? In the same country, but miles away – nationwide? Or international – in other countries?

Psychographics – why customers buy what they do

If demographics look at who your customers are, psychographics take you a bit further into their lives to find out why they buy the things they do. What motivates them and what makes them tick.

Psychographics include things like:

  • Interests
  • Activities
  • Religious beliefs
  • Attitudes
  • Personality
  • Spending habits
  • Lifestyle choices

If you combine the data you collect on the demographic and psychographics of your customers, you can paint a picture of what your potential buyer (or your buyer persona) will look like and who they are. Let’s have a look at one example …

Buyer persona 

Let’s say you’ve done your research, and this is what you have discovered…

Demographic data

  • Female, aged 40 – 55
  • Married with children
  • Household income around £45,000
  • Stay at home Mum who works part-time

Psychographic data

  • Interested in health and fitness
  • Likes to be eco-friendly
  • Is an active member on Facebook and Pinterest
  • Likes socialising with her small group of friends
  • Loves cooking

This demonstrates the difference between the two sets of data and why it’s important to gain both – you have more insight into what your customers might like. Then you can look at your products to see what would interest this kind of customer.

How do you make this relate to your business…and therefore your marketing? I’ll share some examples…

If you have a crafting business, for example, and your crafting activities were soap making or candle making, you’d know that this customer likes natural ingredients that are environmentally friendly and safe for children, so that could be part of your marketing angle.

If you are in the catering industry, making cakes or preserves, she might be interested in special birthday cakes for her family or in your preserves and pickles that use natural ingredients.

Her children are likely to have birthday parties and her friends are likely to have children of a similar age, so anything you make from a crafting perspective may be of interest – bunting for parties, toys, jewellery, etc. And as she enjoys socialising with her small group of friends, she may be interested in hosting an at-home party to buy your craft products.

Where to find her

Once you have this data, you’ll also know where to find her and this is especially important. She may attend local fitness clubs or gyms; she may visit a local spa; she will enjoy lunches out at restaurants or bars with her group of friends. This is where you could leave your flyers and business cards.

Now you know what your customer looks like and what she’s interested in, you can tailor blogs to suit her, you can make products you know she’ll like, and you can find out if she has any particular problem that your products can solve. 

How do your customers like to buy their products?

These days, I would hazard a guess that most of your customers will want to look at products/services online before they buy. They have such a wide choice that it’s important you make yours stand out. People spend their commute to work, breaks, lunch hour, evenings and weekends online, usually browsing through social media sites or looking for something specific. If you are not on these platforms then your products/services will not be found.

Selling online

Social Media is a great way to promote your products or services and to advertise what you do. But you also must bear in mind that not everyone is on social media. If your target market is in the older age bracket, they may prefer not to be on social media, so you will have to reach them another way.

Even though they don’t do social media, your target audience probably still uses the internet to search for things they want. You could set up an online shop.

A website is a crucial business tool – you can link it to your Social Media sites and vice versa. A website can help you reach a wider audience – it gives you a shop front that is open 24/7 – you can even sell when you are sleeping, and you can sell to anyone in the world!

You can put more information about yourself and your business and products or services that you can on social media and, if you have an online shop, you can point your customers to that site. Whatever you choose to do, there is always a marketing technique to support it. If you have a website, you can also choose to add a blog, which could also be a fabulous tool to write about your individual products or services … just another way to get your name/business out there.

I hope this article has given you the inspiration and information to dig deep into your target audience in more detail. I know that once you have all the relevant information, you’ll stand a much better chance of marketing your products or services in the right way…and get those sales.

Share this post to help other small businesses just like you. And if you would like help in identifying your target audience, you can always have a chat with me – or you can find a very helpful workbook on my website shop, which is a step-by-step guide – https://cindymobeymarketing.com/product/how-to-identify-your-target-audience-workbook/

Common small business marketing problems (and how to fix them).

As we blast into 2025, marketing for small businesses becomes ever more challenging. Marketing constantly evolves and technology, algorithms, as well as consumer behaviour changes every year, which brings their own problems to solve.

So, as a small business it’s sometimes hard to keep on top of everything and anticipate what might be the marketing challenges for this year. Sadly, I’m seeing so many businesses going under – most are due to personal reasons, but I’m sure there are some that just don’t know how to get back out there.

Hopefully, this article will shed some light on some of the problems we small businesses face and give you some guidance on how you can stay ahead of the game and use marketing to keep your business afloat this year.   

No marketing strategy

I’m not saying that you do, but it’s often due to small businesses not having a marketing strategy in place. Many small businesses don’t realise that you need to have long-term plans as well as the shorter more tactical goals and plans.

A marketing strategy covers both by outlining your long-term goals and then HOW you’re going to achieve those goals through marketing efforts in the short term, by defining your target audiences, your messaging, content, channels, and metrics.

The problem – without a specific strategy, it’s difficult to determine which channels are best to reach your target audience – to know who they are and where they hang out. And if you don’t measure the success of the things you do put out, such as on social media, you don’t know if what you’re doing is effective. Also, without clear goals, it’s a challenge to know where your business is and if you’re making any progress.

How to fix it – having a good marketing strategy looks at everything, from identifying your target market and having buyer personas, understanding customers’ pain points and motivations, to finding out what channels you can use to best reach them. Setting achievable goals will help you get to where you want your business to be – then you can work on the tactics you need to implement to achieve those goals.

Creating focused content

I know we say this all the time, but good content is what will get you in front of your target audience and grab their attention. But creating good content needs you to have a really good understanding of your audience and how you can address their needs, wants and pain points to engage them and promote conversions to sales.

The problem – if your content doesn’t speak to your audience, then you’ll have low engagement, which will lead to any marketing efforts failing. If your content doesn’t grab attention, people will scroll on by.

How to fix it – Know your audience – create buyer personas so you understand who and what your content needs to reach and do. Make sure that your content solves problems your audience might have and provide them with solutions or actions that will help them, depending on whether you are product-based or service-based.

Your content needs to be purposeful – moving your potential customers on a journey from finding you, to the consideration stage and then finally to buy. This isn’t a short journey! So, create content that:

  • Educates
  • Entertains
  • Engages
  • Inspires

Include good call to actions and continually be thinking about guiding them to the next step. Ensure your content includes relevant keywords that they’ll understand, good descriptions and give easy to find links to your shop, blog, or website so they can find out more.

Always use a wide range of posts – don’t always just do selling posts.   

Connect with your audience.

Linked to the last point, you need to resonate and connect with your audience. If you don’t, you could lose them.

The problem – If you don’t connect with your audience, your marketing efforts will be in vain. If you don’t put out the right messaging, or give the right impression, your reputation could suffer, and you’ll have reduced brand loyalty.

How to fix it – Ensure that you do thorough marketing research and ask your audience for regular feedback (ask for it), so you can better understand what they want, need or like. This helps you understand how your products or services can solve their problems.

Use storytelling and emotive content that grabs attention and builds that all important trust. Listen to feedback and learn from it – even negative feedback can be turned around.

You can also use email newsletters and blogs to connect with your audience, giving them more in-depth information and content, which helps nurture that all important relationship.

By taking all of this into account, you can build lasting relationships, where you understand your audience and they trust you and become loyal customers.  

Social media

The reason that many social media accounts just don’t work is because of inconsistent posting, lack of engagement and failure to give an audience what they want – and the algorithms don’t always help.  

The problem – You’re not growing on social media, or your growth is very slow. This, in turn, limits who your posts reach, and engagement becomes almost non-existent, so you don’t get those sales. Without these things, you miss out on building a strong community and driving traffic to your website, shop, or blog.

How to fix it – You need to have a good social media strategy, which includes regular posting, interactive content, perhaps collaborations with other businesses or influencers. You need to engage with your followers through comments and messages to build relationships. And you need to use insights or analytics to track how you’re doing and adjust accordingly to ensure you’re on track.

  • Have a content calendar, even if it’s just written on a pad or in a word or excel document. Plan your posts ahead, so you know what you’re doing and when – schedule posts to help remain consistent.
  • Engage with your audience through replying to comments and messages. Try to answer comments with a question where you can encourage a conversation or engagement. This gives you a deeper understanding and connection with your audience.
  • Create visually appealing and valuable content that answers questions for your audience, gives them details of what they want or need, and caters to their interests.
  • Collaborate with other businesses, supporting and sharing each other’s posts. If you can get an influencer on board who aligns with what you do, they’ll help you reach a larger audience.
  • Review your social media insights to understand what works and what doesn’t. And act on it accordingly!

People scroll through social media to be entertained or to find a particular business or product. But mainly it’s scrolling until something catches their eye. By including a mix of posts, incorporating humour, storytelling, tutorials etc. you’ll capture attention.

Algorithms  

GROAN! This is probably THE most challenging thing that small businesses face. The algorithms constantly evolve, which can have a huge impact on your engagement and visibility.

The problem – The constantly changing algorithms can prevent people from seeing your posts, your reach can go up and down, engagement can plumet one minute and suddenly surge another. This can have a detrimental effect on your business and your social media efforts can feel ignored.

How to fix it – Try and stay informed on algorithm changes and adapt where you can. Make it your priority to have high-quality, engaging content that encourages interaction. If necessary, book a coaching session with a social media expert so you are up to speed with best practices.

Understand that algorithms are based on the user experience and relevant content, so creating the right kind of content is vital.

You can’t control the algorithms, but you can control the content you put out to ensure that it is valuable, relevant, and engaging for your particular target audience. If you analyse your insights regularly, create valuable content you know your audience likes, you can adapt to the changes and your social media presence will be better.

You’re losing interest in your marketing.

This happens! You just sometimes feel like you can’t be bothered with it all.

The problem – lack of focus in your marketing efforts can leave to a reduced impact and effectiveness of your content, diluted messages, and chaos. Your engagement will fall, and you’ll get less customers and followers will fall away.

How to fix it – Ensure you have clear business goals and marketing objectives that align and support them.

Regularly review and amend your goals to make them more achievable. If a goal seems too big a mountain to climb, break it down into more manageable chunks.  

A marketing strategy will help you remain focused on what matters to your business and gives you direction as to what you need to do to keep your business at the forefront of your target audience’s minds. It also helps you focus on the channels where your target audience hangs out, so you’re not trying to be on loads of different platforms and spreading yourself too thin.

Standing out in the crowd

2025 is going to see more new businesses and products emerging and standing out in the crowd is a big challenge for small businesses.

Ensure you have a unique brand position (USP) that states clearly what makes your product or service different or better than the rest. How are you different from your competitors?

Make sure that you focus on giving an excellent customer experience at every single touch point that your customers have with your business. From website and social media to blog posts and email or messages, ensure that the service you give is second to none, be transparent and consistent and you’ll find customers will be loyal to you and your brand and will recommend you to their friends and family.

Finally, produce high quality, original, engaging content that perfectly highlights you and your business and your expertise.

Conclusion

I’m sure that there are many more marketing problems out there, and marketing is never an easy ride. 2025 is going to continue to bring challenges to small businesses all over the world, but by being proactive and having a robust strategy, you’ll be able to navigate anything that’s thrown at you.

Marketing isn’t just about short-term gains, it’s the marathon, building long-term relationships with customers and having a sustainable plan for your business’s success. Having a strategy in place and with your dedication to your business and creativity when it comes to your content, you can achieve your goals, and your business will be a success. If you’d like help with any of the things I’ve mentioned in this article, feel free to get in touch. I offer a free 30-minute consultation.

How to conduct your small business annual review

If you haven’t already thought about what you want your business to achieve in 2026, now is the time to review the past year, so you can plan for next year.

It’s a bit like having your annual performance review when you work for an employer, only you conduct it on your small business. When you run your own business, you need to keep track of so many things, it’s normal for things to sometimes slide. With 2026 clearly in view, it’s important to be thinking about what your goals will be for next year and how you’re going to achieve that. But you can’t do that until you know how you’ve done this year.

Your business performance review should cover everything your business has been through over the past 12 months and include your successes as well as those not so successful moments.

Look at your 2025 goals

Did you write down your goals last year? If you did, did you achieve what you set out to do?

This is the time to look at both your short term goals for last year – and the more long-term goals to see where you are. You could ask questions such as:

  • What went well in 2025?
  • What challenges did you face?
  • What didn’t go so well?
  • What did you learn from the things that didn’t go so well?
  • Did you learn any new skills or take any courses?
  • How can you repeat the successes you had for next year?
  • How can you avoid any mistakes you made this year?

If you employ anyone, such as VA, it’s time to have a conversation with them and ask them the same questions. You can brainstorm ideas, give, and receive constructive criticism for improvements and come up with a few good goals for 2026.

Look at your business practices

All of us small business owners offer either a service or products to our customers. This is the time to look at how your business practices are working…and if you are aiming all your sales/content etc. to the right audience.

  • Look at your customers. Do you know what your customers’ pain points are? Do you know what your customers’ needs are?
    Once you know this, you can identify how your business is going to provide solutions.
  • Are you giving your customers a good service? If you set your standards high at the beginning of the year, are you still delivering the same standard of service at the end of the year?
  • Are your products or services good value for money?
  • Look at feedback and reviews from your customers so you can identify what products or services were most popular and why.
    If you can identify why a particular product or service is so popular, you can look at how you can replicate that in 2026.

Look at the financials

We all hate looking at our figures, but it’s important to make financial evaluations to determine where you are…if you’re making a profit etc.

Cash flow is the obvious one. You take money in; you pay money out. Sales and expenses are important to understand how you’ve done this year. Compare your sales and expenses to the previous year and see where there are improvements, or losses. Doing this, you’ll be able to have an idea of what you might be able to do next year.

What do you pay out? All businesses must pay out to buy materials, stock, stationery etc. Are you getting the best deals for those items? Have they increased in price this year? Do you need to take that into account for next year? You might need to raise or lower your prices to compensate.

Look at your business insurance. This is often overlooked. Does it cover you for everything you need to be covered for or do you need to have a conversation with your financial adviser?

Are all your relevant licenses and safety certificates up to date?

Expansion – As your business grows, you may have to think about expansion. Do you need to take on an assistant? Do you need bigger premises? Do you need to have a larger stock to cover your increasing client base?

If you are expanding quickly, now is the time to be thinking about employing an accountant ready for those all important, but pain in the wotsit tax returns.

Look at all your social media data

This might seem obvious, but if you’re on social media, it’s really important to look at all your insights for the year. Here are the areas that are worth looking at:

Engagement – yes, you might be getting loads of ‘likes’ on your content, but does it actually get followers to click on your website, or your profile. And do you get sales from those clicks?

You can use this information to help you look at your marketing strategy for next year.

Location – you can see where your followers are from in your insights. We often assume our most engaged followers are local and buy from us. You might be surprised…and if you find you have a following from another country or area, you can customise your content accordingly.

Feedback/Reviews – You will be able to see if any customers have left reviews or feedback on social media, but what about all the other people you’ve sold to this year. If you haven’t had complaints from them, you can assume that they must have been happy with your product or services. You could send out a survey to ask questions about your products or services. If a customer has bought a specific item, ask them what they liked about it. If you put a clause in the survey to say that you can use comments on your website or for promotion – any complimentary reviews you get, you can use. (I still always check if it’s OK to use anyway, but worth including the wording.)

You could offer an incentive to reply, such a 10% off voucher to use in January. This is a brilliant way to get more replies as people just love getting something for nothing – a freebie or money-off voucher.

Take note of any feedback you get and act upon it. If there is a criticism, ask more questions so you can understand what a problem might be – you may be able to solve it simply and quickly with a tweak to your products or services.

Visibility – Where did your customers find you? Did they discover your business on social media? Did they come across you on a Google Search? Was it a personal referral or something else?

This is useful data as you know which areas to work on and you can see which area works best. Every business is different, so what works well for one, won’t work well for another.

Market analysis   

When you first started in business, did you do a business plan or marketing plan? If you did, you will have conducted research into your ideal market. However, this can change so quickly, so it’s always worth including this in your review.

  • This is where you’ll look at your customers’ needs and how you can best serve them. Have your customers’ needs changed since the last time you looked?
  • Look at your existing customers – what do they like/dislike. Is there something they need that you can supply – or do they have a problem that you can solve?

Check out your competitors

This is always worth doing to see what they are up to and how you can compete.

  • Can you offer something unique, that they don’t offer?
  • Is your customer service up to scratch?
  • Look at why your customers choose you over your competitors and make sure you include something around this advantage in your marketing plan for next year.

Celebrate your successes

The point of doing a review is to find out how your business has done against the plans and goals you set. But it’s also important to celebrate all your hard work. Shout about any wins you’ve had and let your customers know how successful your business has been.

You could share the highlights of your year in a social media post for example. Then also give your audience a little teaser about what’s to come in the New Year.

Your 2026 strategy

Once you have completed your 2025 review and have all the data, you’ll be in a better position to know what works well for your business and what doesn’t.

With this in mind, you can now go on to plan your business and marketing strategy for 2026.

If you have some big or challenging goals you want to aim for, why not think about breaking them down into more manageable chunks?

Good luck with your marketing planning and strategy. If you would like coaching on setting up your strategy for next year, feel free to contact me.

How to be accountable to yourself for your business

When you are employed and work for a company, you are usually accountable to someone. You can ask that person for help; you might have a mentor and your manager will usually help you climb the career ladder.

However, when you work for yourself and own your business, the buck stops at you. You are suddenly responsible for everything – not just the day to day running of your business, but the marketing, sales, customer service, your own training, training employees if you have them, and keeping yourself organised and efficient. You are only accountable to yourself…and that can be hard.

It’s not that you aren’t responsible to anyone, it’s that your goals become more subjective. Your diary fills up with things you ‘have to do,’ rather than things you should be doing…or even things you enjoy doing.

But there are ways to create self-accountability so that everything you do doesn’t depend on your willpower alone!

Get yourself an accountability partner

Team up with another small business so you can encourage each other. Share you goals and deadlines, so you can help each other achieve them.

Having someone you can talk to, perhaps just once a week – or even once a month – can really help you to stay on track. You can ask each other for advice, share your new ideas, run social media posts past each other, talk through any problems or issues you might be having with your business, and generally gee each other up to keep going.

This will help you in many ways, but mainly because you won’t want to let your accountability partner down, so you’ll find you get more done and with more enthusiasm. Give it a go!

Share your goals publicly!

By this, I don’t mean plaster your goals all over your social media and website! You just need to be reminded of the commitments you’ve made to your business. Tell your friends and family about the goals you’ve set yourself and your business. Not all of them will ask you about them, and some will forget you even told them, but you will find that a few will ask how you’re getting on – and it will spur you on.

Speak about what you want to do in networking groups or business groups that you belong to and share that you need a bit of accountability. You’ll always find a few people who will be willing to encourage you.

Community support can be amazing. For example, if one of your goals is to learn a new skill, find a training package that includes a support group – or create one yourself. Finding people who you can work with – who have the same interest and goal as you will really increase your chance of success.

Have a plan

I know I’ve said this load of times, but I just love a list! So, for me, planning is key to me achieving things. I always have a ‘to do’ list going, which will help me achieve the things I want to get done. I have lists for the month, for the week and a daily one too, which when I think about it, might be a bit excessive!

It’s about doing things that work for you. The best thing about having a plan of action, and a list, is that it feels so good when you can tick something off that list and see it shrinking.

If your goals are big, work out a way to cut them down in more manageable chunks, so you achieve that goal step by step.

When you can see that things are getting done, this gives you more confidence and will inspire you to keep moving forward.

Keep an eye on your finances

This might seem obvious, but it’s something that can be easy to overlook. The dreaded admin – we all hate it, but it’s important to keep tabs on outgoings and income. Keep your books up to date, and if you use an accountant, give them updates regularly.

In order for your business to survive, you need to know what’s going on with the money. I’m not going to say any more as it’s something we all know about – but worth adding in!

Use a calendar

I’m sure that most of us will use a calendar to put meetings in, schedule work we need to do and deadlines we need to make. But do you use a calendar for yourself?

I’ve started to do this over the past few months, and it makes such a difference. I block out time to batch-make social media posts, write my blog and monthly email newsletter. I’ve started scheduling some of my social media posts so that I save time. I must admit I do like to post in real time too, so I don’t schedule everything. I like to engage with people as they comment, but I now block out time to do this – and guess what? My engagement figures are increasing and I’m getting to know more small businesses.

If you have a goal such as learning a new skill or completing a course – schedule time in your diary for that, so that you don’t forget about it or let it slide. It also helps you to avoid that Mr. Procrastination!

Avoid procrastination  

That does bring me nicely to Mr. Procrastination. One of the things that will help you is to recognise why you procrastinate. Some of the signs are that you will find any excuse not to get on with the job in hand. You might find yourself just doing the easy, quick-to-achieve work, instead of concentrating on the larger, more complicated tasks.

You might find yourself ‘popping onto social media’ for a bit, and then realise that two hours have passed!

Sometimes it’s just that you’ve lost sight of why your goals were important to you in the first place. So, being organised and having a plan can help you with that – and all the other things I’ve mentioned above to be accountable to yourself.

Actively look for new opportunities

If you sit and wait for opportunities to come your way, they won’t. You need to go actively looking for them. If you want your small business to succeed, what can you do? Here are few ideas…

  • Ask for referrals from current customers/family/friends.
  • Network – and I can’t stress this enough – network in groups on social media and genuinely comment on posts. Read the post before you comment so you are aware of what they’re doing that day. Don’t just leave a ‘have a great day’. Ask a question or engage in conversation.
  • Offer incentives and discounts for existing customers – it doesn’t have to be a lot, but every little helps.
  • Re-contact old customers and tell them about new products you have – this could be done via your email newsletter. You could offer an incentive for a returning customer.
  • Ensure your website it optimised for mobile as most view on mobiles these days. Check that all your links work and that your website loads quickly. And make sure that all information is up to date.
  • Use online reviews to your advantage – use them to create a story (with permission of course) – use them to provide proof that your product/service works.
  • Participate in events, both online and local. You may find there’s a local coffee and catch up session for small businesses. If there’s not, is it something you could start? Small businesses like to recommend each other and you’ll find a great community spirit and network.

And finally…CELEBRATE YOUR WINS!

No matter how big or how small, celebrate your achievements. If you’ve cut a big goal down into smaller chunks, celebrate each milestone along the way. Cut yourself some slack and look at all the positive things you have managed to do.

Coaching can really assist you with accountability, and with an action plan to assure you achieve your goals. If you would like to book a free 30-minute consultation, we can discuss your situation and how I can help. Please email me – cindymobey@outlook.com or reach out to me on social media.

Driving traffic to your website

You’ve worked hard to get your website up and running and have done everything you can to make sure it includes keywords; the right SEO and you launch – then hear crickets! There is nothing more frustrating, but just like you have to drive traffic to your online shop with a provider, or to your blog, you also must drive traffic to your website. A website, especially a new one, won’t just magically appear on the first page of a google search.

Driving traffic to your website with content

I know that this is probably startlingly obvious, but you can’t get website traffic without content. It is the absolute cornerstone of every other strategy to drive traffic. So, how do you do this?

Have a blog.

I know that this seems like a bit of a pain in the wotsit, but it really does help get people to your website. A blog is where you regularly publish useful content for your audience. No matter what business you are, a blog is a useful tool and there is always something to write about.

It’s been found that businesses that use a blog get on average 55% more website visitors than those that don’t.

Blog ideas could be:

  • A tutorial on how to do something
  • Talk about a particular product or service you offer with details of the benefits to your audience
  • You could use it to tell your story or let your audience know more about you and your business
  • Behind the scenes
  • FAQs
  • How customers use your products or service with testimonials to prove a point
  • Interview someone – maybe a customer about why they love your products or services
  • Educate your audience on what you do or an aspect of what you do
  • Publish a gift guide on your blog highlighting your products – if you offer gift wrapping, talk about this, and give lots of examples and photos

These are just a few ideas but shows that there are lots of different ways to blog.

Have a good ‘hook’ – headline to draw your audience in – A headline that pulls your audience in is an important part of your content.

Invite someone else to write a guest blog on your site – this can work well with someone who does something similar to you, but in a different way. They will then share their guest blog, which could bring new readers to yours and to your website.

Just ensure that you give them guidelines as you don’t want a blog post that is unethical, gives too many spammy links (which could damage your brand) and make sure that the information they give is high quality and original.

A picture tells a thousand words!  

I’ve written a whole blog post on this subject, but good visuals are a must to create charts, graphs, lovely images etc. And don’t forget to put text behind or under the photo to describe it. That helps your SEO.

In much the same say as images, video can really attract visitors to your website and keep them engaged.

If you use YouTube, you can put the link to your website from your YouTube videos in the video description. And in your video, use a call to action in your narrative to point your audience to your website.

Give your readers useful resources.

This won’t necessarily be relevant to all businesses, but it’s useful to have a resource centre on your website. I have a ‘free resources’ tab on my website and have a load of free downloads to help small businesses. All I ask in return, is that you sign up to my newsletter, then you get a password to get access to the resources.

Resources can be checklists, downloadable guides, how to tutorials, videos, templates, webinars – there are loads of things you can put to help people. What you use for your resources will depend on what you do. A resource centre will encourage people to return to your website over and over again.

Increase traffic with SEO.

Again, I have written several blog posts to help with SEO, but SEO is what helps people find your site in the first place. Here are just some of the basics…

  • Keywords – words and/or phrases that people will type into a search engine. If your website includes the search words people use, it is more likely you will be found. Be aware though, this does take time if your website is new. You can use keyword research tools to help you with this. The Google Keyword planner is a great help for this. You’ll find that there are keywords that have a higher search volume which can make your website harder to rank for, so it’s about striking a happy balance.
  • Long-tail keywords tend to be easier to rank for – as the name suggests, this is more of a phrase rather than just one word. For example, I will tag this blog post with the long-tail keyword ‘Drive traffic to your website’ and ‘How to drive traffic to your website.’
  • Strategic keywords – The next thing to think about is WHERE to put your keywords. Ensure your target keyword is in your title tag, headings, naturally in the body of your article and always within the first 100 words of the text. And don’t forget image keywords in alt text. And if you can, also put it in the meta description (the short description that Google shows along with your title when your article comes up in a search).

Internal links

This is something that is easy to forget when you’re on a roll with writing but try and add at least 1-3 links to other pages on your website, so you keep your readers on your website for longer, which will help with your ranking.

Page speed

This is important as when someone lands on your website, they don’t want to wait for everything to load in order to see your content. I know that I won’t wait for long if a website is slow. 

Make sure that your image sizes are not huge as this slows everything up and ensure that all your plug-ins are working properly.

There is a Google Page Speed Insights tool which can give you a score on your site’s performance and provide suggestions. 

Mobile-friendly

Most visitors to your website will view your site on a mobile phone, so make sure that your website/blog posts are optimised for mobile use. There’s usually a little button when you go into your website’s dashboard so you can check this.

Refresh your content regularly.

Keep your content fresh by updating it regularly. This might be updating your shop contents or changing some of the wording on your homepage or about page. If you do publish blogs, publish them regularly and consistently – and if your blog post is old, ensure that you update it with relevant facts, figures, and dates! 

No matter whether your website ranks on the first page of Google or not, a refresh of content can make all the difference to traffic. You can do this by updating images, ensuring that links are working, adding new keywords, and tweaking words in your meta description every now and again, or updating your product descriptions.

Have a Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile will really help you get local traffic to your website, so this is a no-brainer. Just like a social media site, although easier, you can add new photos and publish a blog post or update with a photo and text to keep it up to date. Feel free to message me about this if you need more help.

Increasing website traffic using social media

Now you’ve dealt with your website and getting that all up to date and sorted for being found, now it’s time to look at how you can increase your traffic using social media.

Promote your content in social media posts.

As I’ve already said, you can’t just publish something and hope that it’s found. You need to tell people it’s there. Whether you use Facebook, Instagram, X, Pinterest etc, when you publish content, give the link to your website. People who come from another source, other you’re your website are called ‘backlinks,’ and this is a great way for search engines to recognise that your content is valued and being looked for.

For example, you’re launching a new product – give the link to your new product in your shop, so your audience knows where they can buy it. Add your website to your bio so it’s obvious you have one!

If you have a blog or a newsletter, publicise this on your social media sites – people won’t know you have either if you don’t tell them, but don’t overdo this – as with everything, in moderation. I publish a blog post every week and use social media to tell people about it. I also have a newsletter which I publicise every month, either in stories or a post.

Add hashtags – If the social media site you use is hashtag-friendly, such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, include relevant hashtags to help the reach of your posts. Make sure the hashtags you use aren’t always the same – they need to relevant to the subject your post talks about.   

Ensure that your website has your social media share buttons, so visitors know you are on social media and which social media sites you are on.

Post at the right time – your insights can help you find out the times of the day and week that you are likely to get most engagement from your social media posts. I’ve tried all sorts of times and find the best for me is very early in the morning as the majority of my target audience tend to be online first thing. I also network first thing – and again for an hour at lunchtime (which other businesses see and sometimes will return the favour and look at my post) – and I do it again in the evening, which is where I sometimes end up having conversations. You have to work out what works best for you and your business. 

Facebook groups – if you belong to any Facebook groups, this is also a good way to get yourself known and there will be opportunities to talk about what you do and publish your website URL. Some groups have specific days of the week when you can do this – just be aware of the groups’ rules and regulations to ensure you don’t get banned from a group by violating their rules.

You can also start your own Facebook group and build your own community.

Business directories

There are usually free business directories in your area where you can add a short description of your business and give your website address. Some let you add photos and a bigger description. It’s definitely worth researching these to find what is available locally to you.

Set up an email newsletter.

I have other blog posts in more detail about this, but an email newsletter is invaluable to your business. People sign up to your email because they want to, so you have a captive audience. You can use your newsletter to promote your website, your products, or services, give news to your subscribers, talk about any events you’ll be attending, give news about any webinars you’re hosting, or point them to your social media sites. Love your subscribers and give them value and they will want to keep coming back for more. You can read more about newsletters here.

Other ways to increase your website traffic.

There are other ways to increase your website traffic, which includes:

  • Host an online webinar – people love to learn, and webinars are a great way to reach your target audience and give them free information. You can also upgrade to do paid online webinars once you are getting known.
  • Participate in forums – answer questions and share your knowledge.
  • Attend a conference or convention – there is usually a cost involved in this, but they can be very worthwhile – and you will engage with other like-minded people.
  • Join a networking group or event – these are still out there as a face-to-face event – this can help you get your business name out there and to meet other businesses.
  • Have a stall at a market or event – if you are product-based, this is a great place to give people details of your website. You’re missing a trick if you don’t add a business card with your website details with everything you sell. And have a stock of your cards on display, so people who don’t buy can take one – they may contact you later.  
  • Use paid advertising to promote your business, or if you are promoting a specific event, such as a webinar you’re hosting.

I appreciate that this has been a long blog post, but I hope that it helps you find out a bit more about driving traffic to your website in a variety of ways. As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions. And check out my website for more details about the services I offer! 

Why a website is important for small businesses!

Why do I need a website?

Ever since lockdown, people are being pushed to shop local and support small businesses – and quite right too! This is possible because of the internet. Small businesses are increasingly on social media, or have online shops, but the problem is that, as a small business, you don’t own those online sites, so if for any reason your business was banned and your social media site taken down – or if an online shop site had a problem with their servers, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. But if you have your own website, you own it and you run it how you like.

A website:

  • gives you the opportunity to have an online shopfront and reach customers outside of your local area and it’s a great way to grow your business.
  • Could be the first impression potential customers get about your business and all you do or sell.
  • Can be found on google and other search engines, so having your own website makes you easier to find.
  • Gives your business credibility and gives you an edge over similar businesses that don’t have a website. It also helps you compete against other businesses in your niche.
  • Means you have your own domain name so you can be more easily found online.
  • Is your online catalogue or brochure, telling the world all about you and what you have to offer.     

If I want to find out how to do something or where to buy something, the first thing I do is look online. Most transactions these days take place online and therefore some of the traditional marketing techniques have been replaced with online strategies. However, a surprising number of small businesses do not have a website.

Mind boggling stats!

According to Statista, out of the nearly 8 billion people in the world, 5.35 billion of them, (around 66%) have access to the internet.

And, on average, internet users spend six and a half hours online every day.

Every second, more than 20 million people are looking on the internet, on their mobile devices or PCs, buying everything you can think of….from books to houses, from kitchen gadgets to garden tools. If you, as a business owner don’t have a website, you are missing a trick as your business won’t be found, so you are missing out on potential sales.

There is a cost involved, but it can be cheaper if you do it yourself – there are so many easy-to-follow website hosting companies that are fairly easy to set up. I paid a web designer to do mine as I didn’t have time and prefer to have someone keeping any eye on it, as well as having someone who knows what they’re doing when there’s a problem, or I want some quick updates done. I just find it gives me peace of mind!   

I know that many small crafting businesses use online shops to promote their business, and it works very well for them. Again, there are costs for this service, and at the end of the day, you don’t own your shop, so don’t have any control over it, but I understand why some find this a better option. Your online shop is still open for business 24/7, unless they have any glitches.

Promote your business 24/7!

As the title suggests, having an online presence means that your business is ‘open’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week….even when you are asleep. Information about your business, your services, what you sell, are there at your customers’ and potential customers’ fingertips. People are always looking online – they research products before they buy and if you have an online presence, and you happen to sell what they want, you could make a sale. If you don’t have a website, you can be almost invisible in searches on search engines…and in this day and age, you can’t afford to be.

Building reputation and credibility

A website gives you the chance to highlight your abilities, your products, and services for the world to see – they can see the quality and price, and if you have an online shop, they can buy directly from you. If you don’t have a website, your potential customers will go to a competitor.

Through your website, you can be seen as an expert in your field, and through the recommendations and comments from satisfied customers, you can be seen to be reliable, trustworthy and that your products are top notch.

When you give out your business card, it will tell potential customers a little about your business. If you’ve given them your card because they’ve seen your stall at a local market, they will assume that they can log onto your website when they get home and see more of your products. Imagine their disappointment if they get home to find no website details…and of course, this will lose potential sales.

Again, you may give a link to your online shop, but it doesn’t give as much information as a website can – and you can’t have a linked email sign up, which helps you promote your products and services even more.

First impression

Not only does having a website make you more credible, but it also shows that your business is established and that you are experienced at what you do. Even if your competitors are stronger than you, a well-built, mobile friendly website can entice customers to choose you instead. You might operate your business from the tiniest desk space in the corner of your dining room, or make your products in your tiny spare bedroom, but when you have a website, your customers don’t see this. All they see is the power of your brand – size doesn’t matter!

Advertise your business

Your website is your ultimate advertising tool. For a relatively small investment in the cost of setting up your website, you can reach millions of people. It is that one brochure that the whole world has access to – no printing and re-printing when you have new products – you just add them online at the click of a button. You can include tons more information and images than you could afford to put into a brochure.

Of course, there is a place in business for brochures and flyers and advertising in local magazines or newspapers, but your online presence is always available, not just for the limited time that you can afford, or until your product set changes. It’s a fantastic marketing tool that is constantly relevant and up to date.

Save you time

Your website can tell people who you are, where you are and what you do. Without a website, you may spend endless wasted time on the telephone or email giving people directions to where you are, giving details of the products you sell or the services you offer. Your website gives all these details in one, easy to access space, available 24/7. Not only does it give these basic details, but it also gives more detailed information about your products. Then, when people do contact you, it’s generally about something more specific or to buy from you or use your services.

Reach a wider audience

Advertising in your local paper, putting out your business cards and attending markets, conventions, and networking events, are all brilliant ways of getting your products and brand out to a wider audience. However, with a website you literally have a worldwide audience. Business often comes from word of mouth, and this is a great way to get local business, but in order to expand and reach customers that don’t know you, the internet is the way forward.

Beat your competition

If you have a business, you only have to look on Facebook or on the internet to know that you have hundreds of competitors who do the same as you. If your competitors have a website, then why shouldn’t you have one? The joy of having a website is that it doesn’t matter how big or how small your business is, it will help you reach more people and increase your sales. Through your website, you can gather information about your customers. You can use your website to host an online survey to find out what your customers want, and online forms can be used to easily contact you to request a quote or ask for further information. When you know what your customers want, you can develop products or services to solve their problems or meet their needs.

Customer Service

Your customers are the most important part of your business. You can improve the service you give them by including FAQs and a Contact Us page. Customers can not only leave comments and recommendations, but they can also ask questions. You can collect your customers email addresses, and with their permission, can send them regular updates about new products. This makes them feel valued and valued customers will come back to you time after time.

I hope that I have helped you to see the benefits of having a website. You may have thought that a website is a waste of money, but it is the exact opposite. You may have to invest a little to get your website written and built professionally, but you will soon get your investment back when new customers find you and start buying from you.

If you’d like to have a look at my website, click on the link below, and as always if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Check out my website

What makes storytelling so powerful?

Storytelling is a very powerful business tool for all businesses, but especially for the small business. It’s something we should all be doing.  

From a very early age, we are brought up on stories. I remember my dad making up stories at bedtime, full of action and adventure, and I was always in there somewhere. Why do we tell stories to our kids? It brings us closer to them, it’s something we can share and it’s something they look forward to.

It’s no different to telling stories as an adult to help your business. It can help create a good marketing strategy, generate sales, and win the loyalty and affection of your audience. There are so many small businesses who don’t realise how telling their story communicates their business brand, vision, and values.

Why is storytelling so powerful for business?

Stories have been used throughout history to give messages to future generations. They convey culture and values that both unite and divide people. History books are full of stories and legends…there are even stories in the bible. And what makes them so powerful? They connect people with fact, ideas, spiritual growth and develop a sense of community. The stories we have in common are what ties families together.

The same can be said about business. Stories not only connect the reader with the writer, they build relationships and familiarity in a way that factual articles and bullet points don’t. Good stories draw the reader in and make a point, which other forms of communication can’t. They enable your reader to learn about you and your business on their own, so it’s important when you decide to tell a story, that it matches the message you want to get across to your audience.

Make it unforgettable and meaningful     

The reason your audience remember a story is because it strikes a particular chord with them. So, if you know about a certain problem that your target audience has, try and write about it in an engaging way that talks to that audience, so it speaks to them, and they have that ‘aha’ moment. Use words and examples that help your audience remember what you have to say, using persuasive language, whilst being friendly and helpful. It isn’t easy, but just takes a bit of practice – looking at the issue from different angles will help people remember your message.

Emotion plays a part

Emotion also plays its part in storytelling. I’ve laughed and cried when reading a book or watching a film on TV. This is because the writers of those kind of scripts know how to tap into the part of us that makes us human. Getting inside the heads of your target audience, and working out what they feel passionate about, will help you influence them with your writing. This, in turn builds a bond or a rapport between you and your readers.

The most powerful stories I’ve ever heard have come from motivational speakers at conferences at the company I worked with in the UK. Stories that tell about a struggle the speaker has overcome…very personal information that they shared and held captive an audience of hundreds of people. The most powerful stories you can tell will be life experiences…maybe a time when you failed at something and how you got back up, dusted yourself down and started again. It could be about a mistake you made that you managed to eventually find a solution to. These stories build connections with your audience and get them on your side, and often it’s something they can relate to. And even better if you can relate or link that life experience to your business. You will get your readers on your side.  

I’m not saying you must open your heart and talk about the most painful experiences or deeply personal experiences you’ve had but pick on something that you know your target audience can relate to – and that may contain something personal or painful. It’s up to you what you share and how comfortable you are with that.  

How to tell your story?

Once you have decided on your message or the important point you want to get across, it’s largely up to you how you write it. But it’s important to think about how you are going to present it to your target audience. If you know your target audience well, you will know what kind of media they prefer. 

They might like to read your stories; they might like to watch you on video or listen to you speaking animatedly on a podcast. You might want to tell your story through a presentation, combining all three elements. It’s up to you. Whichever way you choose, you will be engaging with your audience on a personal level, influencing them to your way of thinking, connecting with them to gain their trust and giving them inspiration.    

If you post on social media, I’m sure that you’ve used quotes from famous people. These are used to make us laugh, cry, entertain, educate, and always have a moral in the story or a meaning that resonates in the quote. Quotes are a form of a short story and that’s why they can be so powerful. Often when I post a quote, people will say that it speaks to them. Some might say ‘I really needed to hear this today’ if it’s motivational or addressing a common issue. What I’m getting at here is that to tell a story, it doesn’t have to a long rambling tale, it can be short and snappy and to the point.

Storytelling is what connects us as human beings, stories help us make sense of what’s going on around us and in the world, and it’s what communicates our values and our beliefs. A good story will make your audience think and feel – and will speak to them in a way that numbers, data analysis or presentations never can. Your stories are what stand out to your audience, what makes that connection with your brand and helps build relationships and loyalty.  

I appreciate that this is not always an easy thing to get your head around. You may think that your story is trivial or not powerful enough, but believe me, it will be.

If you’d like a one-off coaching session on storytelling for your particular business, email me – cindymobey@outlook.com or message me on Facebook. I can teach you the skills you need to tell your story in the most effective way.

How to tell a good story for your business

We see stories wherever we look, and the bigger corporates have understood the benefits of telling their story for years, as part of their marketing strategy. As a small business, we often forget about this little gem. But it really helps us connect with our audiences and instill trust.

Stories help us understand the world around us. They are a way to help your audience understand more about you, without being overwhelmed by the details about your products. They help show the ‘authentic you,’ so that your customers will be more interested in what you have to say about your products.

Why should you tell your story?

By nature, people are nosy and curious – they like to know about the person they are buying from.

Marketing your business is a real challenge in today’s online world, and there is so much competition, so you need to be able to stand out in the crowd.

Storytelling creates a fabulous connection with your audience. Sharing your experiences helps to encourage and help others and brings your brand to life. It conveys the purpose of your business and what you stand for and helps make your products more appealing.

Content marketing

Content marketing is what helps you to sell your products. You need to release the magic that you put into your products, be it artwork, crafts, photography etc. You are creating a story around you and around your work.

It’s an incredibly competitive out there, so your unique storytelling is what will set you apart from your peers. You might think, if your products are very visual (such as paintings or photography) that your pictures will sell themselves – surely, if people like what you do, they will buy it. Of course, this may be true for a small percentage of your audience. They will see something that resonates with them, or you may sell something that they are particularly looking for and have searched for. But sadly, when people are looking online, it’s easy to scroll past something that would actually resonate with them if they knew more about it…and about you. This is where the importance of storytelling comes in. People remember stories, you want to convince them to love your work as much as you do. They need to feel your passion and understand the reasons why you do what you do – this creates a real connection between you and your audience.

Know your audience

The first thing to think about is your audience. Do you know who your target audience are? I’m not going to go into detail about how to identify your target audience and building a buyer persona, but if you click on these links, you can see previous blog posts where I have gone into detail about this.

How to identify your target audience

How to create your buyer persona

It’s really important to know your audience, so you know how to approach them and what kind of content will make them look at your products.

How to tell your story – the monomyth

There are lots of ways to tell your story. In this blog, I’m going to look at the Monomyth, which is just one concept.

Joseph Campbell, an American author, who worked on mythology produced the idea of the Monomyth.

He said that most myths contain some common elements – heroes start out as lowly mortals; they receive some sort of call to adventure and divine assistance to get started. They encounter obstacles along the way, go through a transformation and return to where they started as a hero, changed for the better in most cases.

An example

I’m going to use Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ as an example.

Bilbo Baggins was just a normal hobbit, with a peaceful life, living in the rural Shire. One day, the wizard, Gandalf, calls on him to persuade him to join Thorin and his twelve dwarves to recover their stolen treasure, which is being guarded by the dragon, Smaug.

So, although he initially resisted, Bilbo embarks on a fantastic adventure, where he stares death in the face and returns a stronger, wiser hobbit, and is the hero of the story.

When you are telling your story, the Monomyth is a great way to structure it. If you do this well, you will get and keep your audience’s attention. There are lots of people who have different concepts about the Monomyth, but I like the remarkably simple version and its structure.

The Monomyth

Let’s start at the beginning…your calling…

Like Bilbo Baggins, at some point you felt the calling to do what you do. It might have been a slow realisation that your hobby could be more than just a passing interest. It might be that it’s been a lifelong passion that you felt you could no longer ignore. It could be that you express your beliefs and interests through your work and that you’re getting a message out there.

Whatever it is that brought you to where you are today – these are the things you should use to introduce yourself to your audience.

Talk about what inspires you…is there a meaning or reason behind what you do?

The idea for this part of the Monomyth is to excite and enthuse your audience. You might feel that your reasoning behind what you do is quite mundane, but to your followers, it will be interesting.

The obstacles

The next part of the Monomyth is the obstacles.

  • People love to hear how you overcome obstacles or opposition
  • Your audience what to talk to you and hear about your processes – for example, if you make something or paint, how do you start on a new piece? People love to see a work in progress too, so showing the process in a step-by-step series of posts is a great idea to engage your audience.
  • Talk about the difficulties and how you overcame them.

Good old Bilbo faced danger and adversity to fulfil his mission. What were the obstacles that you faced? You may not have had a great tragedy in your life, (I hope you haven’t), but everyone, no matter what they do, meets adversity or resistance at some point when creating their work.

Some ideas might be…

  • Dealing with health issues
  • Figuring out how to make or do something that was very technically challenging
  • Coming up with funding – how do you fund what you do?
  • Struggling to communicate what is really happening behind what you do
  • Struggling against a system that puts you at a financial disadvantage

For example, we’ve been experiencing one of the worst global pandemics in years and the world basically shut down. How did that affect you and your business? I know it had an affect on my business and on the businesses of several friends.

Did anything you have experienced during lockdown, or during the pandemic, that inspired you and your work?

You might have a story about going into a dark place, where you really struggled to do anything. How did you cope with that? What did you do to pull yourself out of the abyss? I know this sounds a bit dramatic…but you get the picture.

Emerging triumphant

At some time or other, when you are in a creative mode, frantically getting everything down or done that you can, you emerge from your whirl of creativity. This is where you want to sell your products.

It could be that you have an online shop, a physical location, or sell on social media. However, you do it, this is the time to start asking for a sale, via advertising or posting about your actual products.

Make sure that you use a good product description to help your sales.

The returning hero/heroine

Finally, you have success, and like Bilbo Baggins, you are the hero/heroine of the story. When you sell something, share your victories with your friends and family – no matter how big or small. Celebrate your wins! Write about it on social media, on your website or in your blog or email. Be proud of what you’ve achieved…and don’t forget to thank your audience.

You’ve worked hard to get that achievement and you need to show your passion and excitement for your success.

Conclusion

That’s the Monomyth – in a nutshell! It is just one way to tell your story, but it works well as a structure and can give you something to aim for. Put yourself at the centre of your story and share your journey.

Your audience will love to see you progress and will enjoy celebrating your wins with you. Storytelling is a great way to develop your personal brand and to portray the ‘real you’ to your audience. Good luck!

If you’d like to get more marketing tips delivered to your inbox, please sign up to my email subscription. It’s completely free and you get a 102 post ideas for social media as a thank you for signing up. You also get ‘member only’ access to a restricted area of my website, where you will find lots of free resources to help you market your small business.

A picture is worth a thousand words

As a small business owner, most of us use social media or blogs to promote our businesses with our potential and existing audience. But when you know that most audiences engage with your content within the first eight seconds, it’s crucial to draw them in. This is where images are invaluable.

The phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ simply means that an image can convey a point or idea just as effectively as the written word. Images sometimes speak to us and actually say more than any caption you could write. According to Wikipedia, the phrase was first used by a journalist in 1911, so it’s nothing new. A photo or painting can show you certain emotions with one glance.

Images can be calming…quirky…modern…shocking – the media use images to convey their story. What do the images below say to you?

Some are calm images, some a bit scary – they might mean different things to different people, but they are very important in an article or blog and help pull a reader into your writing.

Audiences are lazy and don’t necessarily want to read a full article to get the gist of it – they want information as quickly as possible. However, if you were to write a blog post with just images, it wouldn’t mean a lot; they are important, but they have a supportive role that enhances your writing.

When writing anything, paragraphs are used to break up the text – in the same way, images should be used to help break up the monotony of just words on a page. If faced with a very long piece of text, in general people are more likely to scroll on through, but if the text is broken up with relevant images that illustrate what the text is about, this makes the text easier on the eye, easier to read and understand.

When writing online, it’s important to have clear images. You can either take photographs yourself (make sure that they are high resolution) or you can use photos from the internet. However, it is very important that you do not breach any laws of copyright, so use a reputable site to source your images. There are several different types of images available…

  • Royalty free – you can usually use these images as you like, but you must not edit the pictures or resell them.
  • Rights managed – With this type of image, you have to buy a single-use license for each image you want. You also have to decide where and how you are going to use that image. As the license suggests, it is for single use, so if you buy it for an article or blog post, you wouldn’t then be able to use the same image elsewhere – you would have to buy an additional license.
  • Public domain. These images don’t have any restrictions, you don’t have to ask permission to use them and, although it’s considered courteous to put an accreditation note on the image, it’s not necessary and definitely not obligatory in any way.
  • Creative Commons. These are images that have been created by someone who wants to have accreditation to his/her work.

There are lots of sites out there, for example,  Shutterstock,  are great for buying images. If you want free images, check out Unsplash or Pixabay. I use these regularly!

Images don’t just have to be photographs. If you’re trying to explain something technical, screen shots can be a great way to illustrate what you’re trying to say. And graphs, pie charts and info-graphics all have their place too in helping to make your text stand out and to help you tell your story.

Images are also fabulous at helping you with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you add an image to your blog, put a caption on your image. This caption  or alternative text, as it is more widely known, is what Google uses to crawl the internet looking for images, so descriptive ‘alternative text’ can help Google find your images…and therefore your blog.

Images of people are always popular; as humans we tend to relate to other humans, so the image of someone’s face will pull readers in. There are lots of stock photo images of groups of people and individuals, but don’t use these too often as they are too staged – try and take some of your own. If you’re giving someone advice about a topic, include a photo of yourself smiling and encouraging. Your readers will be able to relate to you and it’s always good to know the face behind the words!

Obviously you don’t want to overdo it. Images should be there to serve a purpose and illustrate a point. You don’t want to shove in a few pics randomly – they need to relate to your content.

Finally, size isn’t everything! You don’t want your images to overpower your words, so keep them to a reasonable size, so your reader can see them without zooming in, but not so big that they take over the text.

I hope this has been helpful. Please let me know if you have any further hints or tips for using images alongside the written word.

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

 

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.  😘 😘

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.

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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  

Get a better brand identity

We all want our businesses to stand out from the crowd. Although it takes some time and effort, it’s worth it to have a unique identity that is instantly recognisable. Your brand identity is what tells everyone who you are and what you do, as well as what they can expect when they interact with your business. It’s what helps you gain loyalty from your customers, get referrals, and build that all-important trust.

There are several things that help make up your brand identity – it’s not just about your logo, slogan, and design scheme, but also about the experience your customers get at every touch point with you.

Mission and vision for your business

The first thing to do is to think about a mission statement for your business, which is a short sentence about what your purpose is. We all know Nike’s tagline, ‘Just Do It’ but did you know that their mission statement is ‘To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.’ So, their mission statement encapsulates everything that the company is about and wants to achieve in one short sentence. This is no mean feat, but achievable for your business with a bit of thought. You could always get a few friends round and have a ‘get my mission statement’ party…but make sure you work on the statement before you start drinking…or you could have some very interesting stuff!

It can be easier if you think of your brand as a person – what does it like or do? How does it help people? What do you want customers to remember about your business? It’s important to be consistent across everything you do and give the same high-quality service and friendly attitude to every customer, so they all have the same or similar experience. This is especially important if you’re dealing with a complaint – be consistent; apologise; find out what went wrong and why and then try and put it right, keeping the customer informed. By doing this you can often turn a complaint around into something positive and turn the complainant into a loyal future customer. I think that the main thing to remember is to always consider your branding with every interaction with a customer.

So, now that we’ve looked at the experience you want your branding to give you customer, it’s time to look at the more practical stuff – business name, logo, colours and design – these are important and help shape your brand, but you need to know what the mission statement of your business is first before you begin, as this helps everything else fall into place.

What’s in a name?

The name you choose will depend on what you do. I chose to incorporate my name in my business name. The reason for this is because with a service business like mine, people will often remember my name, but wouldn’t necessarily remember a random name I came up with. If anyone puts my name into a Google Search, they will find pages about all that I do.

You might want to use a name that incorporates what you do. For example, if I made handmade chocolates I might call my business ‘Cindy’s handmade chocolates,’ keeping it simple, or maybe ‘Cindy’s tantalising treats.’ It needs to be catchy and capture the nature of what you do. Take time to think about it as once it’s out there, that is how people will see your business.


Logo – Once you have your name, you could incorporate that into a logo – again to make your business recognisable. As well as an overall logo, you could also have smaller logos for individual product lines.


Brand Colours – The colours you choose are more important than you might think – according to research by web design and marketing company, WebPageFX, people make a subconscious judgement about a product in less than 90 seconds of viewing, and most of these people base that assessment on colour alone. In fact, almost 85% of consumers cite colour as the primary reason they buy a particular product and 80% believe that colour increases brand recognition. Wow! That’s quite powerful.


Tagline – The most important thing with producing a tagline is to be succinct. Your tagline captures what your business does and its values in one, short sentence. For example, Nike use ‘Just do it’ – L’Oréal use ‘..because you’re worth it’ – both very powerful brands with quite simple, catchy taglines that tell you what they want you to remember about them.

To help you produce your tagline, concentrate on the features of your business, how your products make people feel. Make a list of all the good things about your business …do your products enhance someone’s life?…make them feel more beautiful?…provide solutions to your customer’s problems?

Then brainstorm words that describe those things – it might be worth getting a few friends together to help you brainstorm. Once you have a few words, you can think about a tagline.


Fonts – When looking at your brand for the first time, people will notice the colours and the font – the way the brand name is written. There are so many different fonts, so try and choose one or two that enhance your business name…for example if you sell vintage jewellery, look at a vintage font.

Remember that the font you choose needs to be legible, so don’t pick something that is difficult to read. 


Tone of voice – Most big companies go for straight forward language or the ‘plain English’ approach. This helps customers easily understand what you’re saying without having to wrestle with big words, long sentences, or jargon. Keep the language simple and friendly and you can’t go far wrong!

Brand Personality

Brand personality is the overarching name that refers to a set of human characteristics that can be attributed to a brand name. It’s kind of personality traits that your customers can relate to, in that they see something they can identify with that meets some parts of their own personality. 

Finally, a brand personality evokes a positive emotional response from consumers.

So, how does brand personality work?

If consumers identify with certain personality traits of a brand, what are they? The five main types of brand personality are:

  • Excitement – carefree, spirited, playful, modern, trendy, and youthful.
  • Sincerity – Kindness, thoughtfulness and an orientation towards family values, environmental sustainability, or care for workers or communities
  • Ruggedness – Rough, tough, outdoorsy, unfussy, and athletic
  • Competence – Successful, accomplished, and influential, which is highlighted by leadership.
  • Sophistication – Elegant, prestigious, exclusive, luxurious, and sometimes even pretentious

Even though we are very much in an online age, where automation and AI (artificial intelligence) is growing, people still want to have that personal interaction or direct customer service. And research has shown that customers are more likely to buy from a brand with a similar personality to their own.

Your business’s brand personality should shine out of your posts and in everything you do. It can also influence the type of imagery you use and the way you word posts or share your marketing. It’s definitely food for thought.

Examples

Let’s take a couple I used earlier – L’Oréal tells us ‘You’re worth it.’ Their brand is about empowering women of all ages and backgrounds to believe in themselves.  They believe in the quality, efficacy, and safety of their products, and are world leaders in beauty, hair, skin, and perfume. They now target both men and women, but the tagline most remember is ‘because you’re worth it’.

Nike, on the other hand, with its ‘just do it’ tagline, targets sports people driven to achieve their goals. It’s an energetic and modern brand.

A business’s brand should appeal to its target audience and strive to have brand attributes that attract that particular audience.

This has been a very simple way to look at your brand identity and there is a lot more to it, but these are the basics that should help you on your way.

If you need any help, please feel free to contact me.

Building a brand for your small business

A Brand is the image of your business; the products or services that your customers and potential customers connect with. You don’t even have to see the name of some of the famous brands to know what they are – for example, you see the big, yellow, arches in the shape of an ‘M’ and just know that it’s Macdonald’s – or see the Apple logo and you know what it represents. Building a brand for your small business means you are marketing your business to be recognisable, so the name of your business is instantly connected to the products or services you provide.

If you have a good online presence, you’re already making a start in promoting your brand. You can use search engine optimisation with relevant keywords, which will show up in online searches, but you need to do plenty of research to ensure you are using the right kind of keywords for your business so customers and potential customers can find you more easily.

Your brand says a lot about you, the person behind your business – your brand is synonymous with your reputation. How do your customers see you? Are you seen as an expert in your field? What do you represent? What does your business stand for? When someone hears the name of your business or your name, what springs to their minds?

What is your current brand? 

Put yourself into the shoes of your customer. Type the name of your business into google search and see what comes up – then type in your name. If you were a potential customer, would you employ you? Most big companies in the UK check out potential employees’ Facebook pages – what does your page say about you? If you’re trying to build a reputable brand, be careful about what you say on social media pages – although this is controversial, if you regularly rant about your personal life in public or use expletives, does this give a good impression? Will it affect the reputation of your business?

Social media sites give you the opportunity to build your public image – it’s the one area you have total control over – you decide how you’d like your potential customers to see you. If you are selling a particular craft or product or provide a service, you’ll want to be seen as someone who knows what they’re talking about – an expert. What you post demonstrates that image to the public, so use it wisely.

How do you build a positive brand?    

Set yourself goals…

  • What do you want people to associate with you? What do you want your customers to think of you? If you were going to buy your products/services, what would you look for?
  • arrow-2889040_640A good brand demonstrates expertise. You need to show potential customers that you’re good at what you do. When you do a good job for your current customers, ask them for feedback and recommendations. When I want to buy something on EBay, I always look at feedback to ensure the seller is reputable and delivers what they say they will
  • Your natural style – this is about how you portray yourself. Are you enthusiastic about what you do? Do you show your passion for your product or services? Do some research on other people who offer the same or similar products or services as you – how do they put their personal style across to their potential customers? I’m not saying you should copy someone else’s style, but if their style is successful, it wouldn’t hurt to emulate some of it!

Website – If your name or business name isn’t on the first page of a google search, you need to do some more work on getting yourself recognised. Do you have a website? If you do, research keywords for your product/services and keep your website content fresh and interesting.

Logo – if you don’t have a logo, it’s definitely worth investing the time and money in getting one that captures your business. Then use it..on your website, on flyers, on your blog, business cards and in any advertising.

Blog – do you have a blog? If you don’t, it’s worth thinking about – it’s a way to show your expertise to your customers. Write blogs that are informative and that help people; write about your products and why they’re good; research other bloggers who do the same or similar to you – follow them, make comments on other blogs, become a guest blogger. Get exposure!

Social Media – use social media wisely. Post regularly with relevant content on your business pages; use photographs, quotes, put links to interesting articles – anything that you think your customers would find interesting or useful…or even funny – without being offensive. Remember the 80/20 rule – 80% of posts should be entertaining, engaging, educational or inpirational and only 20% selling.

LinkedIn – this is a great business to business networking site – you can comment on forums, set up your own discussion threads – all of which can help you be seen as an expert in your field.

Google Business Profile – this used to be called Google my business. Get listed on Google so your business can be found easily. This really helps with local marketing and helps people looking for a business like yours to find you in their area through Google search and maps. You can add posts and photos, it’s free and is an invaluable tool.

Building your brand takes time; google takes time to recognise any changes you make, but it’s worth the time and effort. You’ll get more business as more customers find you, like you and your brand and recommend you. This, in turn, will make your reputation grow – make your brand more recognisable….and so your business name and personal name will move up the ranks of google search and you will stand out from the crowd.

If you need any help with your branding, or if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at cindymobey@outlook.com – I’ll be happy to help.

Creating problem solving content for product-based businesses

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a lot of people ask about how to create problem solving content. And why would you need to do that, especially if you’re a product-based business? There is a lot of information out there about problem solving for service-based businesses, so this article is for all my product-selling followers! And by writing this and creating social media content around this subject, I’m creating problem solving content!

What is problem solving content and why do you need it?

The first thing I want to say is that you need to address your customers’ problems or pain points, without them feeling you’re giving them the hard sell. This is a real turn-off!

With social media being such a popular medium, it makes sense to have some engaging content that makes them think. Everyone loves to read a story and people love to be able to express their opinions or join in with a debate, so let’s look at how you can address this.

Problem solving content captures your followers’ attention by giving them an answer to a particular question or concern they might have. And provides tangible examples to illustrate your points.

Why do you need it? It helps your customers and potential customers imagine how they can use your product and that it is something they NEED in their life! Being able to picture themselves using your product and the benefits it brings is half the battle to getting a sale.

Understand your audience’s problems.  

I know I bang on about this all the time, but the first step to creating the content is understanding what problems your customers may have. This once again boils down to knowing your target audience and what challenges they face, what they might be interested in and any obstacles they might have (or excuses) for not being interested in what you have to offer.

One of the ways to obtain this information is to ask questions or conduct polls on social media, asking for feedback from your audience. For example, you may have a very popular product – ask WHY your customers like this particular product.

And ask what else they would like to see from you.

Give your audience solutions they understand and can relate to.

Once you understand the problems or worries your audience has, it’s time to think of ways to show them the solution – one they will understand and be able to relate to.

Don’t just tell them how to solve a problem, show them. You can use case studies, examples from reviews or recommendations, or an online tutorial or short video to illustrate how your product can solve a problem. This helps make your content interesting, engaging and gives them ideas as to how your products can be used.

Let me give you a few examples for different kinds of products:

You sell jewellery – it’s always exciting to show images and maybe slide shows of your jewellery, but if you have a customer who has bought something from you for a particular occasion, ask them to send you a photo of themselves wearing your jewellery. You can then use their review with a photo – it packs more punch.

Give ideas as to how a particular piece of jewellery could work. You might sell earring and necklace sets that would be perfect for a bride to wear on her wedding day. Photograph those sets with a wedding inspired background – if you use Canva, there are wedding inspired backgrounds you can use. Then, instead of just focusing on the bride, why not show other sets that may be in different colours that could be gifted to bridesmaids? If you do jewellery with different length chains, you can say that in your content.

If you make your own jewellery, show the process in step-by-step photos or be brave and do a time lapse video, stating that you offer a bespoke service for those special pieces or gifts.  

You make hair accessories – you can use all the same ideas as for jewellery, but also you can include children in your marketing. Children love hair accessories for many different occasions, such as going to school (could you offer scrunchies or hairbands in school colours for example?), or the same with a bit of bling for parties.

When you are advertising your products, show or give ideas as to how they can be used. If you do adult accessories, (as someone with long hair that gets in my way), you could push the angle of headbands/scrunchies are not only stylish and pretty but keep your hair out of your face when you’re gardening or at the gym.

You sell gift items – this is a broad category. You might sell soft toys, handmade items or personalised items, or a host of other things. But the principle is still the same. Give potential customers ideas on how they can be used and what events they could be used for. This could be birthday’s, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birth of a baby, christening, wedding – the list is endless. But if you have products that could be adapted to all these special dates, you have a bigger market for your products.

If you have safety features or must have safety certificates for your products, mention this, so people are happy that a product is safe to gift to children for example.

You sell beauty products, personal products, or home cleaning products – there are lots of ways to show and tell that these products solve problems. For skin products or personal products, it could be that it will make your skin glow, help with skin problems, is an effective deodorant, softens your skin after shaving – the list is endless. The key here is to do videos of you using the products or having lots of before and after photos from customers, or photos of customers using your products. Reviews about how it helped solve a particular beauty or personal problem will also give you social proof that your products work and are worth investing in. Tell customers that they don’t contain any nasty chemicals and if they are allergy friendly.

The same applies to cleaning products – are they eco-friendly and don’t contain harsh chemicals?  Do they work? Create videos showing you using the products, for example on a sink – before and after. Use customer reviews to give you social proof.

I could go on with all the different types of business out there, but the principles are the same, no matter what business you are in.

Be honest with your audience.

This goes without saying, but transparency is really important. Be honest about what customers can expect from your products and their solutions. Don’t promise something you can’t deliver or you’re not sure is correct.

Always set realistic expectations.

Engage with your audience.

This is more important than a lot of people realise. Talk to your audience. When they make a comment on your post, always reply to it and if necessary ask questions and engage in a conversation. If someone asks a specific question, answer it or if you think it might be more personal, reply that you will send them a private message – and ensure that you do!

Ask for feedback on your products, your content, your videos and ask if there is anything else your audience would like to see.  

Do you write a blog or have your own newsletter?

If you write a blog, you can use it to go into more detail about a particular product. A post on social media shouldn’t be too long or people won’t read it, but if they read your blog or have signed up to your newsletter, you have a captive audience, who WANT to know more or find out more about you and your business, including your products.

So, if you create a post that you could give a lot more detail about, write a blog post about it and advertise that on your social media account. And if you have a newsletter, include a paragraph every time about one of your products and how it solves a problem. Again, you can advertise this on your social media posts. This not only offers a more in-depth service, but it also directs traffic to your website or blog.  

Final thoughts

You need to know your target audience and what they want. You must understand what kind of problems they have that your products can solve.

If you feel you are struggling with how to create problem solving content for your business, I can help. Sometimes it’s a case of ‘two heads are better than one.’ I offer an hour’s brainstorming session, where we can discuss your business, find out more about your target audience and set a plan in place to create that problem solving content that will speak to your customers and ultimately get more sales. Either message me or drop me an email to make an appointment – cindymobey@outlook.com

Now, put your thinking cap on and get creative!

Using Facebook to grow your email list

Growing your email list is one of the best ways to grow your business. I know that most of us use social media, and that is one of the ways to promote your email list. In this blog, I’m going to talk specifically about growing your email list on Facebook.

Before you start

Before you begin to promote your email list, I would suggest that you create an engaging incentive. Most of us spend a large percentage of our time every day reading and answering our emails, so people don’t want to be sent an email, just for the sake of it. They want to be sent an email for a reason. One of the best reasons you can give is to have an exciting and engaging lead magnet that provides tons of value and therefore will encourage people to join your email list.

Incentives could be:

  • A discount code
  • An e-book
  • A workbook
  • A free course
  • A quiz

Whatever you choose, it will help you get more subscribers than if you just asked them to sign up for your newsletter. Everyone loves a freebie, and if that freebie delivers value, then even better.   

Once you have your lead magnet sorted you are ready to promote your email list. Facebook is a great place to do this, so here are a few ideas to help that promotion along.

Create a new Facebook page cover

This sounds obvious, but so many people don’t do this. If you have a lead magnet to promote, create a Facebook cover image to promote it. I use Canva, which is a fabulous site which gives free templates for this kind of thing and it’s super easy to use…best of all, the templates look very professional.

Once you have your new cover created and on your page, make sure you update the button on your page to link through to your lead magnet landing page. This just makes it easier for your visitors to navigate and they don’t have to go searching for the relevant link.   

Create a post

You can also create posts in Canva, so spend a bit of time creating a promotional post or graphic to promote your lead magnet. In fact, it’s a good idea to make several, with different captions – make sure that the captions talk about the pain point or problem that your lead magnet will solve. For example, my lead magnet now is a free list of 102 Facebook post ideas, which gives people great ideas without them having to think about it. I know that some small businesses struggle with coming up with ideas of what to post, and as I help small businesses with their social media and marketing, it made sense to create this to help them out.

Once you start posting your promotional posts, you will soon see which caption works best and you could use it for future ad campaigns.

As well as a promotional post, you can also create posts that simply invites people to join your email list. Don’t forget to tell your visitors how your newsletter or emails will help them – what benefits you provide and the value they will get from it.  

Use your About section

Your Facebook page has an About section, so ensure that you are using this to its best advantage. Once you have your lead magnet, you can include it in your About section, telling visitors what it is and how it helps them, with a CTA (call to action) to invite people to join your email list.

Join Facebook groups

You will know who your target market is and, if you have a business page, probably already belong to groups where they are members. If not, search for groups where they are likely to be and join. It can be tempting to join Facebook groups that are full of people who do similar things to you, and as these groups and networking in them, can take quite a bit of time, I wouldn’t advise being in too many of them!

The only way you’ll know if a group is right for you is to join and network. Join in tasks and fun competitions or silly posts. Engage in all the business posts and keep your eyes peeled for questions members might ask that you can answer and show that you are helpful and knowledgeable about your subject. Obviously, you give this information away for free! People are more likely to respect and build trust with you if they can see that you give value and are genuine … not just doing a sales pitch.

If you have a business page, you will also have a personal profile on Facebook. So, make sure that you have your work information on there, so people can click through and follow you, or have your website address link, so people can check out what you do…and have another opportunity to join your email list.

Run and ad campaign on Facebook

You can also run an ad campaign to grow your email list. The benefits of an ad campaign are that you can directly target your ideal customer, so you know you are reaching the right people.

There are two types of ad campaign…a conversions campaign or a leads campaign. If you choose a conversions campaign, you can measure how your ad is performing, and if you have the Facebook Pixel on your website, you can measure which of your ads ends up with people signing up to your email list.  

A leads campaign will simply collect email addresses on a landing page on Facebook. You will most likely generate more volume with a leads campaign, but you’ll get a higher quality of lead with a conversion campaign. You won’t know what works best for you until you try both.

Promote your blog

If you have a blog, then Facebook is the ideal place to promote your blog articles. Make sure that your blog post has a call to action to sign up to your email list or newsletter.

  • You can simply post a link to your blog in a Facebook post.
  • You can put a link to your blog post in a Facebook group, if you’re answering a question about something you’ve written about.
  • You can also create a promotional graphic, which includes your blog title on it and include a link in the caption.

If you produce evergreen blog content, re-share some of your older content every couple of months as you will pick up new followers from them too.

Run a contest

Running a contest on Facebook can really boost your engagement rate and can also help you with new followers. You give away a simple prize that is related to whatever you do. There are loads of different types of contests, such as:

  • Like a post to win
  • Comment on a post to win
  • Like and comment to win
  • Caption competition
  • Fill in the blank competition
  • Photo contest

The list is endless, so you can be creative here. The prize can be given by either doing a draw – you put all the names of the people who have liked, comments etc., into a draw to win. Then you do the draw ‘live’ on Facebook and can create some hype and a real buzz around it.

You could also give everyone a prize. For example, if you’re a service-based business, you could pull together a valuable checklist that helps do a particular thing. Everyone who enters, gets the PDF with a link to subscribe to your email list.

It’s up to you how you host your contest.

If you have a website…

If you have a website with a subscribe button, when someone signs up for your email list, redirect them to a thank you page with social media share buttons. Invite your new subscribers to share the valuable lead magnet they’ve received with their friends and family.  

Finally…

Don’t forget…

…to track the traffic that comes from your Facebook page to your website or to your email list. Then you will know what works and what doesn’t. If you use Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see what traffic is coming from Facebook. This is so valuable as you can see what kind of posts are the most popular and what drives people to sign up to your email list.

Good luck and if you need help setting up a lead magnet and email sequences, get in touch and I can help.

And, if you would like to join my email list and have monthly marketing tips delivered to your inbox, click on the link below. You’ll receive 102 post ideas for social media, and gain access to a private members’ only section on my website, where you’ll find oodles of freebies to help you market your business.

Sign up to my email to receive more marketing tips.

54 ideas for email content

Email marketing is a fabulous way for your customers or potential customers to find out more about you and your business…the brand, products, or services they care about. The great thing about email is that people have to opt-in to receive your emails in their inbox, so they are choosing to have communication from you on a regular basis.

So, let’s start with a few facts…

  • In 2025, the number of email users is expected to reach 4.6 billion (Techjury)
  • 37% of individuals have two email accounts (Statistica)
  • 63% of people who open up an email try and find a discount (LXA)
  • 99% of email users check their inbox every single day (Hubspot)
  • 60% of consumers reported that they have made a purchase as a result of a promotional email (OptinMonster)
  • Automated emails can generate 320% more revenue than emails that are not automated (Campaign Monitor)
  • Mobile devices account for nearly 60% of all email opens (Luisa Zhou)

Also, according to The Radicati Group, “Email remains the most pervasive form of communication, while other technologies such as social networking, instant messaging, chat, mobile instant messaging are also taking hold, email is still the more ubiquitous form of business communication. In addition, email is integral to the overall Internet experience as an email account is required to sign up to any online activity, including social networking sites…”

How do I produce new ideas every month?

This is the big question that I’ve been asked several times, so after a bit of research and hard thinking, I’ve produced a list that I think will help you tailor your email to your audience, to keep them engaged and to keep them coming back for more, month on month.

But, before I give you the ideas, think about these three questions first. You shouldn’t just throw any old content out there – it must fit your brand and your target audience.

  1. Will your email hit the spot with your target audience?
    You know your customers, so you need to make sure that any content you publish is right for them and will add value to them and their lives.
  2. What are your goals for your email?
    You need to know why you’re setting up an email list. It could simply be that you want to have more engagement with your business or to help you increase sales. Once you know what your goal is, think about how you want your audience to respond. It’s important to pick content ideas that will help you achieve your goals.
  3. Does your content fit with your brand?
    In the same way that you pick the content to target your audience and help you achieve your goals, you also need it to fit with your brand. Does the content align with the core values of your business?

I always bang on about the 80/20 rule when I talk about content for social media posts. That is, all content should consist of 80% engaging, entertaining, educating and inspiring your target audience, and only 20% sales.

The same applies to content for your email marketing. So, with this in mind, I’ve created a list for you, under those separate headings.

What content can I put out there?

Engaging ideas

This is where you can share things that help your audience to get to know you and your brand. Be authentic and show your personality. This helps your audience relate to you, feel cared about and valued, and to find out what your brand stands for.

  • Share things that you love – this could be images, music, articles, or stories that you come across.
  • Introduce yourself and tell your audience about your business. What is your ‘why?’ Why did you start your business and why do you do what you do?
  • What inspires you? This could be individual inspiration for particular products or services that you offer.
  • Show behind the scenes videos or photos of your business. You could video you making a product, packing an order to a customer, or unpacking an order and showing each individual item to camera.
  • Share a ‘day in the life’ and take your audience through a typical day for you.
  • Tell your story and share a list of things you wish you’d known before starting your business.
  • Share something that didn’t work for you, (we’re all human), and how you rectified it. Or share an obstacle you’ve come across and how you resolved it.
  • Write about your children or your pets and how they make you happy or mad (!) and tell a funny story about them.
  • Share a charity you support and why it’s so important to you.
  • Share your most popular posts from social media.
  • Talk about any courses you’ve done or any certification you have. You might have done something to upskill – share it!
  • Ask your audience questions – if you’re thinking of a new product or service, ask their opinion.

Entertainment ideas

These things help show your fun side. Make your audience laugh, think, or test them in some way. Content that you share to entertain doesn’t have to link directly to your business or your products/services. It’s about showing the authentic you. Although it doesn’t have to link to your products/services, it is important that it will appeal to your target audience.

  • Holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas. Share funny stories or facts.
  • Memes and jokes – share something that makes you laugh – just be aware of things that could offend your audience.
  • Contests – share a contest through your email list, set out what it is and what they must do – and tell them the winner will be announced in your next email. This will ensure they open and read the next email you send!
  • Quizzes – set up a quiz with a set of questions and offer a small prize for the winner…to be drawn at random. You can publish the results in your next email.
  • Share a case study of one of your products from the perspective of a customer. Ask a customer if you can interview them and feature them in your email as a case study.
  • Host a poll – ask a question and have multi-choice answers.
  • Share the link to an article or post you’ve read that you have found interesting/entertaining.

Educating ideas

There will always be something that you can teach your audience. Whether you’ve been in business for years, or just a few months, you will know how to do something that others don’t. Your business will be unique, even if you do a similar thing to other businesses, because you are unique and have your own set of values, interests, and ways of doing things!

  • Provide hints and tips to help your audience
  • Create a video showing your audience how to do something
  • Create a series of videos or photo shots, showing the creation of a product or service, from start to finish, with an explanation for each stage.
  • Give tips on what NOT to do, related to your business.
  • Create a template or checklist that your readers can download for free.
  • Create a beginner’s guide to something you know all about. It can be in PDF format and doesn’t have to be a book!
  • Share an infographic.
  • Share trends in your industry or interesting articles about your niche.
  • If you see a new legal thing that impacts your type of business, share it for others to see.
  • Share any blog posts you’ve written that month, or any articles that your business is featured in.
  • Share facts.
  • Share an actionable idea that will make your audience’s life easier.
  • Tell your audience how your products or services can make their lives better – what problems do you solve for them?
  • Share a book you’ve read and why you like it, especially if it’s something that teaches your audience how to do something.

Inspirational ideas

There are lots of different definitions of inspiration and what that means. Here’s just a few from some of the bigger dictionaries.

Another way to describe inspirational content is motivational. This is the way I tend to thing of it. If something motivates me, it inspires me to do something different or something new – or just makes me think!

So, with all of these in mind (wow!), here are a few ideas:

  • Share inspirational or motivational quotes.
  • Share a case study that you feel is inspirational.
  • Do you have testimonials about your products or services? Share them!
  • Tell a story about how you overcame something. It could be an illness, a sports injury (and your journey back to health), an obstacle in your business or something from your childhood.
  • Show what inspires you. It could be a photo of your favourite place…it could be something or somewhere that makes you feel safe.
  • Talk about the things that help you stay inspired and why. It could be that you do daily meditation or yoga. You might enjoy getting out in the fresh air and hiking or the kind of exercise you’re into.
  • Talk about your hobbies – for example, if you love taking photos, share the ones that inspire you and say why. Share your passion with your audience.
  • Share your bucket list – you could have serious or silly aspirations on your bucket list!

Sales ideas

Finally, you can talk about your products or services from a sales perspective.

  • Share an offer or discount
  • Talk about new products and how/why you created them.
  • Link to your website, price list, online shop, or blog.
  • Give the link to your subscription page and ask them to share it with their friends and family – or anyone they think would be interested in your products or services.
  • Give an incentive to buy your products – do you have a loyalty card like they give in coffee shops? E.G. Buy 10 coffees, get one free.
  • Give a freebie as part of a competition – or just give a freebie because your readers are loyal customers/followers.
  • Focus on one product and tell your readers all about it. What are it’s features and more importantly, what are its benefits? How will your product make their lives better or easier?
  • Share images of your products, maybe share a best seller, with price.
  • Create a video of some of your best-selling products and share it in your newsletter.
  • Share any media coverage or articles written about your business.
  • If you attend an event, write about it and how well your products sold.
  • If you have a stall at a local market, share photos and experiences.
  • Ask customers to send you photos or short videos holding or using your products.

I really hope that this blog post has helped you think of new and innovative ways to get content into your email. Thank you for reading and I hope you are inspired to get started with email or give yours a good re-vamp.

Sign up to my email newsletter to get valuable marketing help and tips – and you’ll also receive 102 ideas for social media posts, as well as access to a ‘members only’ area on my website full of free resources.

Selling at markets – hints and tips

The past few years have been difficult for everyone and just continues with rising prices and the world economic situation. This has been particularly hard-hitting for the small business, particularly if you sell products. It’s where knowing a bit more about marketing your products comes in and what you can do to maximise the possibilities of selling to your target audience.

I’ve heard several small handmade businesses talking online about the problems they have with making sales – even when they take a stall at a market. So, I thought I would put my marketing thinking cap on and come up with some useful tips to help get those sales.

Before you go

Before you get started or start booking yourself into every craft show, fayre, or market…STOP!

It’s important when you have a handmade business, or in fact any business, that you choose the right venue or event for your business.

You and your products will be judged by everyone else around you, so it’s important that you’re in the right place. For example, if you are at a market or car boot sale, where everyone is selling second-hand goods or junk, the value of your products or services will suffer. So, it’s vital to research the place you’re planning to sell to make sure that it’s right for your particular kind of products or services, so that you give yourself the best possible chance of making sales.

If there are lots of stalls at the venue you choose, check with the organisers how many other stalls are doing the same as you. It’s good to have some competition, but you don’t want your pitch to be right next to someone else who does the same as you, or similar.

Your stock

Seems obvious, but make sure that you have enough stock to sell – be prepared. As you sell your products, your display will reduce…it’s great for you, but can have an adverse effect on those looking to buy from stalls – if there’s not much on your stall, they won’t stop and browse.

In an ideal world, you should sell 8-10 times the fee you paid to have your stall. So, make sure that you have enough stock to replenish sold items, keeping your stall looking as professional as it did when you set it up.

The basics

There are lots of little things to get in place before you can go to the venue.

  • Do you need any special licenses or permits to do the event?
  • Make sure you’ve got the relevant insurance in place
  • How are you going to take payment for your products?
  • Plan how much stock you’re going to take, so you know how much you need to make, and order any materials you might need
  • How are you going to package and wrap your products once they’re sold? Make sure you have enough packaging or wrapping.
  • Think about how you’re going to transport your products – do you need to get any boxes or containers to carry it all?
  • Put price labels on every product – or make price labels for groups of products – there’s nothing worse than having to do this on the day – or worse, not having prices and people either must ask, or don’t bother and walk away.
  • Make sure that any tables, cloths, stands, or props are all clean, not damaged or broken and that you have enough.
  • Make sure that you have signage, so people know what you do. Have business cards or flyers that you can give out or include with purchases.
  • Have something printed to collect email addresses, that asks for a customer/potential customer’s name, email address, stating they agree to having email from you. After the event you can send them a link to your email sign up. Or, have an iPad or phone so you can send your email sign up link to them on the spot.      
  • If it’s an outside event, do you have a contingency plan to keep your products dry in case of a shower? Similarly, if it’s really hot, can you have something to keep you and your products in the shade…and don’t forget sunscreen?
  • Pick your outfit and make sure it’s comfortable and practical – wear comfortable shoes!
  • Pack a chair so you can sit down in between customers
  • Have a rubbish bag with you, pens, paper,
  • Take a packed lunch or snacks and drinks.
  • Make sure that you have fuel in your car and directions to where you are going! And change for parking if necessary.      

Pre event marketing

Although the event will be advertised by the event organisers, it’s a good idea to advertise that your business will be there. Put this everywhere – on your social media pages and add to any groups you belong to. If you have Google My Business, put it on there as this will help with local business. Add it to your website. Tell everyone you know…you could even print off an A5 ad and put it in the window of your car! Make use of any local advertising – some supermarkets or local shops allow small adverts or posters – make one and put it anywhere you can – stating that your business will be there.

Get sales savvy

Before I go into sales on the day…before the day, set up your stall at home – how will it look on the day? Be uber critical – look at it from every angle, so you know it’s right.

Think about the type of people that will visit – you could have children or people in wheelchairs or motorised scooters. If all your stock is up high, is it accessible to everyone?

On the day

Arrive in plenty of time to set up and get everything out of your car, tables set up etc. You don’t want to start the day rushing and flustered.

Once you are set up, do a quick test. Stand where people will see your stall for the first time – maybe 50 feet away. This is the first impression people will have or your stall – what’s your first impression? Does it look inviting? Is it too dark or empty? Can you see what’s for sale? Is your signage visible and does it say clearly what you do?

Once this is done, you’re ready for your customers!

Engage your customers

Don’t just stand behind your stall and expect people to come to you. You need to talk to everyone that comes to your stall. Most people will be generally browsing and looking for reasons not to buy – you need to persuade them that they WANT to buy. So, give them the reasons…

  • Talk about your products
  • Tell customers about the benefits – what it does for them – it could be it would make a great gift for Mum, Dad, friend etc.
  • Everyone loves a story, so talk about your products. How was it made? Where is it from? For example, if you make products from driftwood or sea glass, talk about where you got the raw material and what gave you the idea to make it into your products. It’s not just a sea glass bracelet or necklace – it’s crafted from sea glass that you personally collected from a beach in XXXX. Get people’s attention and interest. A good story can give extra value that actually clinches a sale.

Appeal to everyone

Very often, at craft events or handmade events, there will be Mums and children. Usually, children are given a small amount of money to spend…and Mum is normally with them. Make sure you have a few small items that are pocket-money-affordable, so that you attract the children. Then whilst they are browsing you can engage Mum in a conversation and talk about your products. There’s then the possibility of a bigger sale.   

Target the senses

Encourage visitors to your stall by appealing to their senses.

Here are a few examples…

  • Encourage touch – put a small sign that says, ‘Touch me, I’m hand-felted wool’, or ‘The softest scarf you’ve ever felt’.
  • You might sell soaps or scented candles. ‘I smell delicious, smell for yourself’.
  • If you sell things to eat, such as cupcakes, hone in on the tastebuds. Instead of just having a plate with little samples – asking people if they’d like to try, make it more enticing…for example, you sell ginger or cinnamon spiced cupcakes, ‘Smell and taste Christmas’. Or even, ‘Taste me – what do I remind you of?’ It’s putting out a challenge and giving people a reason to taste your wares…giving them permission to be indulgent.

Don’t have things packaged away in boxes – have the items out of their boxes, so people can see them, or touch them.     

Get in touch with your customer’s senses!

A customer buys from you – what next?

Inside you’re doing your happy dance – you’ve made a sale! So, you wrap the purchase, take their money, and thank them – they go on their way.

NO!

You could be missing a trick here. Don’t just let them disappear in the crowd, never to be seen or heard from again. Wouldn’t it be good if you could increase your sales, and make them come back again – or come back with a friend?

Loads of businesses use a loyalty programme – such as coffee shops. Buy so many cups of coffee, get one free. Why not jump on this yourself? Give a loyalty card – once they’ve purchased a certain number of items from you, they get a freebie.

Introduce a friend and if that friend buys from you, they get 10% off their next order.

Ask them to sign up to your email newsletter, where they will get information about where you’ll be at future events, details about your products or services, link to your online shop, and social media. And details of any special offers you run. Have an incentive to sign up, (a lead magnet). This is simply giving a customer or potential customer something in return for their email address. It could be a freebie of some kind or a discount on their first order.   

Even if this doesn’t work, make sure you add a business card/thank you card in their package when they buy. They will find it later when they get home and might decide to look at your online shop.   

ALWAYS engage first and then sell.

I really hope that this has been a useful article for you if you are a handmade business.

If you have any further suggestions of what you do at events, please add to the comments below. Thank you for reading!

Sign up for my monthly email newsletter for more marketing tips to help your small business.

Are hashtags still viable in 2024?

Did you know that hashtags have been around for about 20 years on social media?

Originally they were used to help filter and organise conversations on Twitter, but over the past several years, Instagram and then Facebook have adopted them to help businesses to be seen and found on search engines.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to talk about Instagram and Facebook.

What are hashtags?

Hashtags are used on social media platforms. A hashtag is a sign (#) followed by a word or phrase. The word or phrase that businesses use will depend on what kind of business they are, or what their social media posts are about. That word or phrase is seen as a category for search engines.

For example, I often use the hashtag, #smallbizmarketingtips when I post on Instagram. I’m a marketing coach and content creator helping small businesses. So, this hashtag is relevant to my business. I often post tips for small businesses to help them with their marketing. Using this hashtag does what it says on the tin – it marks that particular post into the #smallbizmarketingtips category.

Not only does it categorise my content, so that when someone searches for #smallbizmarketingtips, my posts are often included under that hashtag, it also helps individual businesses find an array of tips from lots of different marketing businesses.

In a nutshell, a hashtag helps social media users connect with other businesses over specific topics and popular content – and acts as an invitation to discuss, view and engage with all sorts of content online.

Should you use hashtags?

Yes, absolutely. Using hashtags increases your chances of being seen on social media and in search engines. For example, hashtags help Instagram know exactly what your content is about and helps IG suggest that content to people who are interested in that topic. It also helps show that content to users who are searching for specific topic too.

How do I find hashtags?

There are a few ways to do this…

  • You can simply put a search into Google. Just type in ‘hashtags for XXXX’,  (whatever business you are in). A list of hashtags will appear…usually it shows you the top 10 or more for that category.
  • You can use a hashtag generator tool. Some of these tools are free, but I haven’t found any that you don’t have to register for – and often there is a catch or hidden fee somewhere!  
  • Simply log into your Instagram account, go to the search and type in # followed by whatever you are looking for. You will then be shown the top posts that have posted under that category. It also tells you how many posts fall under that category.

Do not use hashtags that have millions and millions of posts under it – your post will just get lost. I always advise using hashtags that have under a million…and mix it up. So, use a couple that have between 700k and a million posts, a few that have between 200k – 700k, and the rest under 200k, making sure you use some that are under 50k. This gives you the best chance for your posts to be shared in that category. I actually also use hashtags that only have between 500 – 1k posts, as I know my posts will feature in that category and it gets my business out there.

How many hashtags should I use?

It really depends on what you want to achieve. On Instagram, you can use up to 30 hashtags per post, but new info suggests 5-10 max.

There is no hard and fast rule, however if you keep your hashtag numbers lower, you can connect with your specific audience better.

Facebook is slightly different. A study conducted by thesmallbusinessblog.net looked at over 200,000 brand posts on Facebook.

The study found that content with one or two hashtags had 593 interactions on average, compared to 416 engagements for posts with 3-5 hashtags and 188 interactions for posts with 10+ hashtags. From this, it’s clear that Facebook posts with fewer hashtags tend to perform better.

Are hashtags still popular in 2024?

That’s a BIG, FAT YES!

Including a hashtag strategy in your marketing will help you build your brand. There’s never been a better time to put relevant hashtags in your social media posts. They play an important role in connecting potential customers to your business.

I can help you build your hashtag strategy, so contact me to get started!

The Instagram Algorithm in plain English!

I’ve been reading a lot about the Instagram algorithm (and the Facebook one too) and, although I eventually understood, it took a while as so many articles are written in such an unnecessarily complicated way. So, I thought I would write one, taking details from the research I’ve done, and put it into plain English! I hope this helps.

What is the Instagram algorithm?

Basically, it’s a way to look at the content on Instagram and rank it into a particular order. The algorithm decides what content is shown and what order it’s shown in each Instagram user’s feed. It also uses this same information to decide what is shown on the Explore Page, Reels feed and hashtag pages.

The algorithm takes every bit of information into account and analyses every piece of content that is posted. It also looks at any captions or alt text on images and hashtags. It then decides what and how it is going to give relevant content to each user, ensuring that they all have access to subjects they are most interested in.

It knows what you like and want to see as it looks at, not just what posts, stories or reels you post, but what posts, stories or reels you look at, as well as considering any other interests or behaviours you show on Instagram.

For example, I post mainly marketing tips and quotes for small businesses on my feed, with the occasional light-hearted post thrown in.

As well as looking at other businesses’ marketing posts, I also look at foodie, keto and recipe type posts, and reels. And I love following photographers, crafters, artists, and some fun stuff.

So, these are the kind of posts that are fed into my suggestions.

How does it work     

Every time you go onto Instagram, the algorithm scans through all the available content to decide what to show you.

It looks at three particular factors:

Your relationships – it looks at the content you post and the people who look at it – and vice versa. Do you follow each other? Do you leave comments on each other’s posts? Do you message each other? If you regularly interact with the same user, you’re more likely to see any new content that they post – again, the same vice versa.

This is important for your small business. If you are constantly responding to messages and comments – and sending/posting them, it can help improve your visibility on Instagram.

Your interests – the algorithm looks at the type of content you interact with. When it notices that you tend to look at similar types of content, it will give you more of the same.

Is it relevant? The algorithm will decide how relevant each piece of content is, if it fits with any current trending topics and whether the content is evergreen or timeless. The most recent posts are considered more relevant than older ones for example.

How often you use IG – If you don’t use IG very often you will only see things that are directly relevant to you, so you might find you seeing only posts from your friends and family.

Another thing that is considered is how many people you follow. The more people you follow, the more accounts are competing for space in your feed.

How long you spend on IG – this is called session time. If you don’t spend much time on IG, as I said above, you’re more likely to mainly see posts from your friends and family, whereas if you spend a significant amount of time on IG every day, you will start seeing more posts that you are interested in, and similar businesses to your own. Also, you’re more likely to see more posts from those you follow and interact with.

Why do you see what you see in your feed?

Every day you will see lots of posts and stories that the IG algorithm predicts you will like, based on:

  • The accounts you follow
  • How many likes those posts get
  • How many times you’ve interacted with that account in the past (through likes, comments, profile visits, follows and saves etc.)
  • What kind of posts or stories you look at and interact with

After it’s assessed all these things, the algorithm has an idea about what other kinds of posts you might be interested in, and then pushes them to your feed and stories. This might be accounts you already follow, but it also shows you posts that it thinks you’ll like from people you don’t yet follow. It will also suggest accounts that you might be interested in.

In the same way that the IG algorithm looks at all these different things and rewards quality, engaging content and pushes it your way, it also rewards quality, engaging content that you post by pushing your account to others.

There are strict guidelines about posts

Just the same as any other social media platform, there are strict guidelines about what is not acceptable. Posts that contain misinformation, or of a political nature, or content that is potentially upsetting or sensitive are not liked, so if you post this kind of thing – or if your images or videos are low resolution, you might find that your posts are not pushed to other accounts.

The best way to get seen on IG

The best way to get seen on IG is to post a variety of posts regularly, such as carousels, single posts, images, reels, video, stories etc. When posting reels or stories, use the filters, effects, stickers, polls, links, music etc that is there to help you, as this makes your posts more interesting.

Check out your insights

Your insights will give you information about your audience and what kind of posts they like best, so keep an eye on this on a regular basis. It also tells you what time is best for you to post to get the maximum reach for your account.

Getting more engagement on a story or reel can be as simple as adding a sticker or poll. It’s about experimenting with all the options available to you, to find what works best for your business and followers. Ask questions so that you encourage your audience to engage with your posts, and always reply to comments and DMs.

Why are hashtags important?

Whilst the IG algorithm can evaluate certain things, it can’t recognise what’s in a photo or image you’ve posted. This is one way that hashtags come into their own. For example, if you’re a pet photographer and you post photos you’ve taken of customers’ pets, the algorithm won’t know this – but it will recognise the hashtags, such as #cutecats or #dogsofinstagram. Using accurate and descriptive hashtags that are relevant to your post will help the algorithm understand your post, and so push it to people it knows are interested in that subject.

Conclusion

To sum up, the IG algorithm evaluates content and ranks it. It looks at what you and others like and matches up accounts it thinks will resonate with you all. Hashtags help it to categorise posts, so it pushes those posts to what it thinks are the relevant audience.

You can help the algorithm get your posts noticed by doing a variety of different types of posts, using all the gimmicks available, posting regularly, and engaging with people who comment on your post, and with those whom you comment on.

Use your insights to help you know what your audience find most interesting and engaging and to find out when is the best time to reach your maximum audience.

Instagram is a social media platform…so you must be sociable. You can’t just post and run and hope that what you post is seen.

If you found this helpful, please leave a comment below. And if you have any questions, or need help with your Instagram posts and marketing, please feel free to drop me an email – cindymobey@outlook.com  

Alternatively you can check out my website.  

How to stand out on your Instagram bio

Your Instagram bio is the first thing visitors to your Instagram account will see. You have 150 characters to introduce yourself to your audience, let them know exactly what you do and how you can help them, and to engage them. It seems a bit overwhelming to try and so all this in just 150 words, but this blog post will help you…I’ve got your back!

You need to write a bio to create a good first impression and also to give your readers a reason to follow you, like and share your content…and ultimately convert them to customers.

What are the main elements of a good bio?

The main elements and objectives are:

  • Descriptive and keywords in your profile name
  • Tell your readers what they can expect from your page and what’s in it for them
  • Include a good call to action (CTA). This is basically telling your audience what you want them to do next
  • Include a link to your website or blog
  • Use line breaks and emojis, as this makes it much easier to read

Your profile photo

Your followers want to know who you are and what you look like. I always suggest a photo of yourself (not your pets – this is your business page!) Make sure the image is clear and use a head shot if possible.

If you really don’t like using your photo, lots of people use an image of their logo.

User name and display name

Make sure your user name field is optimised with your name and a searchable keyword. Your Instagram handle is your user name – for example, my Instagram user name is ‘Cindy Mobey Marketing’ It gives my name and what I do.

If you were a hairdresser, you could put your name and then ‘hairdresser’ or ‘hair salon.’ This helps with searches that people make.

Your Instagram display name is the name people will see at the top of your Instagram bio when they visit your profile. Mine is my full name – Cindy Mobey.

Business Category

Your business category shows under your display name. When you input this on Instagram, it is via a dropdown box. The categories are quite limited, so you’ll need to find a category that best describes your business. For me, the nearest and most accurate category I could find was ‘Internet Marketing Service’.

Description – Highlight your skills

This is the most important part of your Instagram bio. It informs your audience about what you do. Think of it as your pitch to your customers and include details about what you sell, or what service you offer.

Incorporate line breaks, bullet points and emojis to help your bio stand out. Keep it concise and to the point. Depending on what you do, you can be creative with this, as well as saying what you do on the tin. Above all, try and let your personality shine through!

For example, if you were a Social Media Manager, you might put something like..

  • Social Media Management
    Helping beauty, wellness and skincare businesses grow

Or if you do something specific in that field…

  • Social Media Management made easy
  • Videography & photography

Some people include where they are based.

Use relevant keywords

Use keywords that are relevant to your business. This helps you connect with your followers and helps describe what you do.

Keywords could include your values and interests and those of your target audience, so you attract them into your feed.

If you were a business selling nutrition, for example, you could include keywords such as ‘wellness,’ ‘nutrition,’ ‘self-care’ etc. You get the idea.

Call To Action (CTA) & relevant link

A call to action or CTA is simply telling your reader what you want them to do next. Do you want them to visit your website? Go and browse your online shop? Read your latest blog post? Sign up to your newsletter?

ALWAYS include a CTA at the bottom of your Instagram bio and include the relevant link. Instagram currently only allows one link, so if you have all of the above, it’s a great idea to sign up to something like Linktree which is a tool that allows you to share multiple links on social media. This is especially good for Instagram, due to only one link allowed in your bio – you can just publish your Linktree link, and when your followers click on it, they can see all your other links to website, shop, blog, newsletter sign up, and you can link to other social media pages too.

Contact details

You can also add your email address, telephone number and the actual physical address of your business too. Your contact details don’t take up your character space, so that’s a bonus, and you can choose whether contact details are visible or not. If you agree to them being visible, contact buttons will be added to your profile.

Highlights

If you haven’t heard of highlights and don’t use them on your page, take a look at my bio – you will see that I use highlights to give more information about myself and what I do. Highlights are underneath your profile.

When you publish a story on Instagram, it only remains visible for 24 hours, then it is automatically archived.

Instagram Highlights allow you to save and categorise your stories on your profile so followers, new and old, can still view and interact with past stories, well after that first 24 hours expire.

Recap

Once you have your Instagram bio set up, it’s worth asking some of your friends, family, and peers to have a look at it. A good bio will create a fabulous first impression and convince your audience to follow you and engage with your posts. So, you need to:

  • Tell who you are and what you do
  • Use keywords to target your ideal audience
  • Add a link to your website or blog
  • Complete the email and telephone fields so your audience have other ways to contact you

And, above all, show your personality. It’s worth spending time and effort into your bio to get it exactly right. The joy of your bio is that you can change it over time – make sure you review it every couple of months and make adjustments, checking your links work, so it’s always up to date and continually improving.

If you need help with writing your bio, or are not sure what you can include, feel free to contact me – cindymobey@outlook.com I’m happy to help.

Dos and Don’ts for your business Facebook page

Despite all the hype and buzz around TikTok and other social media platforms, Facebook is still the most-used social media platform in the world.

Facebook had 3.05 billion monthly active users and during the 4th quarter 2023, Meta reported that 3.98 billion people use at least one of their core products every month – core products being Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger. (Source – Statista.com)

This is great news for all of us small businesses who use our business page to promote our products or services. Facebook is an inexpensive, and largely free, effective way to connect with your target audience, but there are some things you should and shouldn’t do. This post looks at the dos and don’ts for your business Facebook page.  

DO

First, let’s look at some of the things that are advisable to do on your Facebook page.

  • Pick an easily recognisable image for your profile picture (either of photo of you or your brand logo). People want to know who they are interacting with. Don’t use photos of your pets for your business page – unless your business is about pets, and even then I would use a logo or you and your pet.   
  • Use your cover photo – feature an image that represents who you are and what your business does.
  • Ensure you complete the ‘about’ section of your page. This is your chance to tell your audience a little bit more about you and what you do – you could use your elevator pitch here.  
  • Develop a distinct voice for your Facebook page – so you sound the same as you do on your website and other social media pages. And don’t forget that you can use humour and show your personality!
  • Make sure you include links to your social media pages on your website, so people finding you there know where to connect with you on socials.
  • Post interesting and quality content – make sure that your content isn’t all about selling your product or service – use a variety of posts.
  • Post consistently on a regular basis. You can see from your insights when is the best time to post for your audience.
  • Post engaging images and ask questions to promote engagement, or do the odd fun post, such as those predictive text posts, quotes, or a funny meme.
  • Include links to drive traffic to your website, blog or newsletter sign up.
  • If you share other peoples’ content, ensure that it is relevant to your target audience.
  • If you are attending or arranging an event, post about it.
  • Celebrate your wins and share your successes.
  • Reply to and ‘like’ comments left on your posts.
  • Use hashtags to increase interaction – experts are currently recommending 3-5 hashtags on Facebook posts. Despite being allowed to use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram, the current guidelines (from 2023) suggest 3-5 – the same as Facebook. But you may find more work better for you on Instagram.
  • Mix up your posts with single image, multiple images, and video to gain the most engagement.
  • Check your post grammar and spelling and don’t forget a call to action.
  • This is a hard one but respond quickly and publicly to any customer that complains or leaves a negative comment on your posts. Don’t get angry or defensive and don’t get into specifics about the issue. Just respond positively and then take the complaint offline. This shows other customers that you care about your customers and are responsive to their concerns.    
  • Finally, measure your posts by checking your insights so you know which posts are the most engaging with your audience, or get you the most reach/comments/likes etc. You can then use this to plan your following week’s/month’s posts.

DON’T

  • Invite huge lists of people to like your page or get tied up in follow for follow posts. If people like what you do, they will follow you. Doing follow for follow may boost your followers briefly, but most will unfollow you after a short period, or just never bother engaging with your posts because they didn’t choose to follow you for the right reasons – and this is very damaging to the algorithm.
  • Constantly promote the sales of your products or services – use a variety of posts to keep your audience engaged.
  • Don’t completely flood your feed with posts – if you post several times a day, space them out.
  • Overuse hashtags. 3-5 is plenty per post – any more than that and your post could be seen as spammy. Put hashtags at the end of your caption rather than incorporating then into the caption itself.
  • Don’t post low quality images, memes, or information.
  • Don’t post anything that you wouldn’t like to see in your newsfeed.
  • Don’t be afraid to experiment with your posts to see which are the most popular.
  • Don’t forget to use your insights to help you plan posts.
  • Neglect to post at weekends – you don’t have to post on both days, but this is when most people are at home and scrolling social media.
  • Don’t use abbreviations or jargon.
  • Don’t ever ask for personally identifiable information.
  • Don’t engage in an argument on your business page – if someone has a problem, reply politely, and take it offline.
  • Don’t post anything that could damage the professionalism of your business or that could damage your reputation.
  • Finally, don’t get involved in engagement baiting.

Engagement Baiting

This could be a whole other blog post, but basically engagement baiting is goading people into commenting on posts without it being a meaningful interaction.

Facebook will prioritise posts that inspire back and forth discussion, but using engagement bait will be recognised and post will be demoted in the newsfeed.

Engagement baiting includes:

  • Vote baiting – asking your audience to give their opinion using a like, share or comment.
  • React baiting – Giving your opinion in your post, then saying ‘like if you agree’ – whoops! I’ve been guilty of this one without realising it!
  • Share baiting – Encouraging your audience to share a post if they agree with the content or share to win a prize or be entered into a contest.
  • Tag baiting – asking your audience to tag someone in the comments.
  • Comment baiting – asking followers to comment on the post.

I’m not sure I agree with all of these, but I guess it’s about the way you ask for things. Facebook’s guidance says that you can:

  • Ask for authentic input – asking for advice, recommendations, help or tips. And you can ask customer to share their tips for using your products or service or how they think they could be improved.
  • Ask questions as this promotes engagement and interaction. A study conducted by Hubspot found that posts that use the words ‘should, would, which, and who’ get the most comments and those that use the words ‘why and how’ get the fewest comments.
  • Post content that people want to talk about.
  • Provoke an emotional response – posts that surprise your audience or make then laugh, cry, or get angry.
  • Post a photo and ask for a caption.
  • Try and ‘fill in the blank’ post – this could be using predictive text or just from their own experience.  

There’s an awful lot to take in with this post and I appreciate it if you actually got to the end of it! As always, if you have any questions about this post or any of my other posts, or if you have any suggestions for future blog posts, please feel free to email me (cindymobey@outlook.com) or message me on messenger.

Personal vs Business Facebook page for networking?

Is it better to use my personal profile, or my business profile on social media for networking? This is a question that seems to be out there a lot lately, and there is plenty of conflicting information. Some seem to be on the side of using your personal profile and others talk about the benefits of using your business profile. So, in this article, I’m going to try and unravel the various opinions, then you can make up your own mind as to what would be best for your small business.

According to Facebook itself, your personal page should NOT be used exclusively for business purposes – you should set up a business page. If you do promote your business on your personal page, make sure you read Facebook’s terms of service to make sure you don’t go against their rules – if you do, your account could be shut down.

That being said, you can use your personal page to indirectly promote awareness of your business. So, what does that mean?

What is the difference between a personal page and a business page?  

Personal page  

When you decide to have a Facebook profile, you must set up a personal page as you sign up as an individual. The purpose of your personal page is to stay connected with family and friends – that is, people that you already know. You can connect with ‘friends of friends,’ and with people you meet inside Facebook groups.

You can join groups via your personal page, which means that you do start to accumulate ‘friendships’ with people you don’t personally know. You can also join groups from your business page, but only if the admins of that group allow members to join from their business page – which in my experience is very few, so I tend to join groups from my personal page.

Your personal page will also show you with your family, and maybe out with friends at parties etc. This kind of content, especially if it shows you doing things that would be inappropriate or harmful to your business, wouldn’t be the kind of thing you’d necessarily want your business associates and customers seeing. For example, family members may not want their wedding or family photos in the public eye.

However, you can adjust your personal page to make it more professional, for those times when you do want to share something about your business, such as making your posts public. Just remember, if there is a post you only want friends and family to see, you will need to adjust this setting each time you post something personal.

There is value in using your personal page to help your business’s visibility. The connections you have with people on your personal page can be stronger than with business pages – people may be more likely to trust your business as they know you and personal pages tend to have a greater reach than business pages.

Your friends on your personal page are more likely to see an update from your personal page, than from following your business page, and if you share some of your updates about your business on your personal page, you have the potential of reaching a completely different network of people. But you do have to be careful that your content is not all about business, or you risk violating Facebook rules and regulations. It is a bit of a minefield.

So, what kind of content can you share?

  • Share news about winning an award or if your business gets into local or national news.
  • Share details of charity events that you support.
  • Blog posts
  • Photos from a conference you attend, or a networking event. Or, if you have a team, you could share about a company picnic or outing.
  • Client stories
  • Business tips

But as Facebook rules state that you cannot use your personal page solely for business, you have to be sensible and pick and choose what you share – and not bombard your personal page with content. It’s about getting the balance right.

Business page

Your business page is all about your brand and your business – or about a cause that is close to your heart. It’s a no-brainer to use a business page as the benefits are huge.

You can set up ads, promote your products and services every day through posts and stories.

The good bits about a business page are that you can:

  • See insights, which is data about your followers – when they’re online, which posts or stories were the most popular and a host of other useful data.
  • Advertise – pay to reach a specific target audience, which helps with targeted campaigns.
  • You can plan and schedule posts for weeks ahead.
  • You can also outsource your business page to a social media manager, so they can post and manage your page for you.
  • Tagging – you can tag other businesses and they can tag you in posts using your business name.
  • Collect and share reviews – social proof is a must for every small business.
  • Set up an event and invite followers.

Your business page is the place where your customers know where to find you – as it uses your business name. You can communicate directly with your customers to answer their questions, asking them questions and getting feedback.

Your business posts help you grow your community, giving your customers the opportunity to share your posts with their friends and family and so creating a digital ‘word of mouth’ as such!

You can also choose to boost a post to a specific audience by their geographic location, age, interests, and lots more. This can work well if you do your research well and know exactly who you want to target.

You can add website or online shop details so your followers can click directly from your page from their mobile devices, so don’t have to do a separate google search.

The downside to a business page is that Facebook’s algorithm tends to prioritise content from personal pages over business pages. They want you to advertise or use boosted posts to help you increase your visibility, so it takes more effort to get your page established.

Talking of effort, managing a business page takes a lot of time and effort to create and post content, respond to messages and posts, and maintain a consistent strategy to stay active and keep your audience engaged, but once you get it right and get organised, it is very rewarding and brings in the business.   

Networking Conclusion

Networking on Facebook is about building professional relationships with other businesses or group members and about creating a good reputation for your business.

Growing your network and followers will increase your visibility and will help establish yourself as an expert in your line of business.  

And we’re back to that original question – Is it better to use your personal page or your business page to network?

My conclusion is to use BOTH! I know (!), but after all the research I’ve done, I’ve come to the conclusion that both have their merits and by using both, you will reach a larger audience.

So, use them together, engage with your audience using one united voice. Interact in groups from both (some groups will only allow you to interact with groups from your personal page) and publish your content on your business page, but still share the odd post/blog with your personal page, and definitely share good news about your business on both, as it’s relevant to you both personally and professionally.  

It’s about striking the right balance and not overdoing the promotional business stuff on your personal page, as you’ll risk violating FB rules.   

I really hope this has helped you see the differences between the pages and help with your decision on how to network effectively – use both! It makes sense!

If you’d like any help with your business page or don’t have the time to consistently post or create posts, drop me a message, and we can have a chat about how I can support you through content help or coaching.

Alternatively, check out my website for more information.

Supercharge your customer touchpoints

This sounds like just another one of those buzz word things – so what am I talking about?

Every business wants their customers to be happy with the service and experience they receive. But, unless you have your customers in mind at every single touch point, you could be missing out on some great opportunities to delight them and keep them coming back for more.

What is a touchpoint? According to SurveyMonkey, the definition of a touchpoint is “…any time a customer or potential customer comes into contact with your brand…before, during or after they purchase something from you”

You may have great products, delivered on time and with a smile, but if your advertising isn’t on target, or they receive billing mistakes, or have to deal with a clumsy and clunky website, you can scare your customers away. Luckily, these touchpoints are easily fixed and within our control.

Let’s take a look at the general touchpoints a customer will come across…these are just some examples.

Before a sale – Social Media sites, Website, Customer reviews, Advertising/Marketing.

During a sale – Shop or office, Catalogue, Phone.

After a sale – Billing, Emails, Newsletter

Make a list of the touchpoints your customers have with you, then look at them in turn, e.g. your website…is it easy to navigate? Do the tabs point to the right things? Do the links work? Are you easy to contact? Do customers get a quick reply if they do contact you?

Supercharge your touchpoints

Now it’s time to supercharge your touchpoints for a better customer experience.

Personal touch – Try and speak to a customer wherever you can as most people like to be treated as individuals. I prefer to speak to a real person, not an automated service as I can ask questions and, if there is something I don’t understand, I can simply ask. It is also easier to build a relationship with your customers if you actually take the time to talk to them, as it makes them feel valued. They will feel that they are important to you and your business, that their custom is appreciated and that their opinion matters.

Consistent Service levels – Be consistent across all your dealings with customers, not just on the phone. You have won their custom and now it is time to build their loyalty and gain that all important customer satisfaction. So, not only ensure that you give excellent customer service on the telephone, ensure that they receive the same experience if they email you, such as a prompt reply, with the answer or solution they want wherever possible.

Know your customers – Know what your customers want and who they are. If you can solve a problem for a customer, do it…they will always remember that you went that extra mile…and will recommend you to family and friends. Something that you did this year that went really well, might not work next year – never make assumptions where your customers are concerned. One of the simplest ways to know what your customers want is to ask them. This could be via a courtesy phone call (but be careful not to be a nuisance), via a short survey or hold an event, where you can interact directly with your customers and they can see who you are and meet you properly.

Resolve any mistakes – If you make a mistake, own up to it and put it right quickly. Don’t blame anyone else, just resolve it and offer some kind of compensation, such as 10% off their next order. The four step system is a good way to deal with complaints.

Listen to the complaint…don’t argue or put the blame on someone else – the customer doesn’t want to hear this – he/she just wants you to listen to what they have to say.

Acknowledge the complaint – let the customer know that you understand their complaint by relaying it back to them. This not only shows that you have been listening but gives hope that something will be done. Thank them for bringing the situation to your attention and assure them that something will be done.

Solve the complaint – if you can, resolve the issue, keeping the customer informed along the way. In the first instance, after you have acknowledged the complaint, say that you will look into it and will get back to them within 24 hours – even if you haven’t resolved the problem yet, ring them within 24 hours to let them know what’s happening. Keeping them informed every step of the way is very important in keeping that customer in future and lets them know that they are a valued customer.

Thank them – you have already done this when you acknowledged the complaint but do it again. If the issue has taken or is like to take a long time to resolve, maybe offer them some kind of compensation – a money-off voucher or a free gift.

Appreciate your customers – Let your customers know they are valued, e.g. send regular customers a ‘thank you’ card, or give them a money off voucher for being loyal, or ask if they’d like their purchases gift-wrapped.

It’s also really crucial to look past the sale…once your customer has bought something from you, don’t make it the last time they hear from you…follow up the sale and ask how they are getting on with the product. Are they happy with it? Do they think it could be improved? Do they have any questions about that or any other product that you sell? They may tell you about a problem they have that you can solve for them, or give you an idea for a new product.

If your customers are really happy with the goods and/or services they receive from you, ask them if they could write a short review, either on your Facebook page or on your website…or if they prefer, they can send to you on email. Ask if it’s OK to share their review with other customers and potential customers.

Whether your business is a huge concern, or just a one-man/woman team, excellent customer service must be at the heart of everything you do. It can take extra time and resources, time and money, but good customer service leads directly to customer satisfaction, which can generate great business for you via word of mouth. It can also you’re your business thrive and ultimately be a success. Never underestimate the power of good customer service – it’s your businesses life-blood.

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or need any help with your marketing. I offer a free discovery call to discuss your business and how I can help.

Don’t underestimate the value of Word of Mouth Marketing

What is Word of Mouth Marketing?

Word of Mouth Marketing seems like a pretty obvious one, but it is absolutely crucial to your business. It’s when your customer’s interest in your products or services is spoken about in their daily lives. In simple terms, it is free advertising generated by the experiences that your customers have with your business. This can be anything from a great customer service experience, where you have gone the ‘extra mile’ to help them with a problem, or maybe solved a problem they didn’t realise they had. Something extraordinary, or just a product or service that they are really pleased with and want to tell their friends and family all about it.

It really is one of the most powerful forms of advertising as 92% of consumers trust their friends over traditional media, according to The Nielsen Global Survey of Trust in Advertising.

Word of Mouth Marketing (or WOM Marketing) includes viral, blogs, emotional and social media marketing.

Example of WOMM

WOMM is all about creating a buzz around your business – your products or services. The more you interact with your potential target market and with your existing customers, the more the name and reputation of your business will spread. It kind of creates a snowball effect. For example, say you own a restaurant. You create a comfortable atmosphere, the food is great, the service is exemplary, BUT, not only do you do that, you make every single customer feel special. Their dining experience is perfect because you have gone above and beyond to exceed their expectations. When they leave the restaurant, they will leave a review on your social media site talking about the fabulous service they received, about what a great place it is to eat and what a wonderful time they had. That’s great, but the snowball effect is that they will not only leave a review , they’re also likely talk to their friends and family about what a great night out they had, and tell them they ought to try out your restaurant. This is part of the ‘creating a buzz’ scenario. And this can be followed up by you…

ALWAYS reply to reviews and feedback; thank customers for their comments and say how pleased you are that they enjoyed their meal at your restaurant. If you have a website, point them to the website to sign up to your newsletter, so they will be informed when you have special events on, (you might have live music nights, for example or do a special ‘Curry night’ or ‘Chinese night’). And advertise these events on your social media pages for those that don’t choose to sign up to a newsletter, (they’re not for everyone)!

Ask your customer who has left a glowing review if you can use it for your marketing. Share the review on your other social media sites, website and in your newsletter as ‘proof’ that your place is the best! If you get some really glowing reviews, you could ask the customer a few questions about why they enjoyed that particular evening – what made it special for them? Then you could turn this into a mini case study as to why your customers enjoy your restaurant…and give your customer their five minutes of fame, whilst at the same time making him feel very valued and that his opinion really does matter to you.

It’s all about TRUST

If a customer feels that they are listened to and valued, they will start to have an emotional bond to a particular business. This is the reason that most large Corporates have a whole team of people, who talk to their regular customers to discuss products, either with a personal visiting service, via a review of products the customer has (insurance products for example), or on the telephone. This works well as the customer feels that the company cares about them and is interested in what they are likely to do next in their lives. Let’s face it, this kind of interaction is not only to make sure that customer has the right insurance products, it’s also a fact finding mission to find out if there is anything else that could be sold to them in the future. But the point is that the customer feels that the company they have chosen cares about them.

No matter how big or how small your business is, TRUST is a huge issue and one that needs to be nurtured with every customer you have. If they trust that you have their best interests at heart, that you genuinely care about them and value their opinions, they will be loyal to you and will always be willing to try out new products or services that you offer. And, they’ll tell their friends that you have a new offer going on!

Can’t I just make up some great reviews?   

Yes, of course you can, but this wouldn’t really achieve very much as you won’t have that real person going around telling their friends all about you. It may help you attract new business, but you’re starting off from a deception. There is an official body in the USA that has crafted a code of ethics for the industry.

“The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is the official trade association dedicated to word of mouth and social media marketing. Founded in 2004, WOMMA is the leader in ethical work of mouth marketing practices through its education, such as WOMMA Summit, professional development opportunities, and knowledge sharing with top industry marketers. WOMMA’s membership is made up of the most innovative companies committed to progressing the word of mouth marketing industry through advocacy, education and ethics.”

https://expertfile.com/organizations/WOMMA-Word-of-Mouth-Marketing-Association

The word of mouth marketing strategies they promote are “credible, social, repeatable, measurable and respectful” and there is no tolerance for dishonesty.

How is WOMM different to referral marketing?

Word of Mouth Marketing is about creating that buzz, no matter what kind of business you have, how big or how small you are, or the kinds of products or services you offer. The more you engage with people, the more the name of your business and your business ethics will spread. It’s all about the snowball effect.

Referral marketing, on the other hand, is a more focused and targeted marketing media. It focuses your attention on a specific person to actively encourage that one person to refer their friends. It is a segment of WOMM, but it’s a more proactive way of generating new customers. You have control over the whole referral process to convert a particular customer to buy your products or services. This could be through the use of funnels, for example.

How to do WOM Marketing

Engage with your customers and potential customers, not just collect them. You might have hundreds, or even thousands of followers on your social media account, but are they all interested in what you do or sell? Or are they just there, not really interested, but more of a ‘follow for follow’ basis? Do they interact with what you post? Do they feel that connection with you? It’s about building engagement, building a relationship with followers that are genuinely interested in what you do and feel a connection to your business. The more passionate they are about you, your business, your products, your services, the more likely they are to share what you do, share your posts and tell people about their experiences.  

 

If you set yourself up a strategy, there are things you can do to increase the WOM around your business…things like a partner programme, affiliate marketing and using reviews.   

Your biggest marketing asset is your existing customer base, so create something worth talking about and encourage your existing customers to talk about it too.

  • People trust their friends and what they have to say. Ask customers to refer a friend…you can give incentives to encourage that. For example, refer a friend and get 5-10% off their next order or get a free gift.  
  • When a customer has bought something from you, or used your services, ask them to leave a review.
  • From the reviews that you get, identify something about your brand that has the possibility to generate a buzz or create something new that will generate that buzz.
  • Get your existing customers on board – you could create a competition, with the winner receiving your new product or service.  

Word of Mouth Marketing is a free and easy way to promote your business, but does take a bit of time and hard work. Gaining trust and engagement with your business is a two-way street, but when it works, you will have meaningful relationships with people who will become your best brand ambassadors.

How to promote your website

There has been lots of talk recently about the online shop channels where you can list your products for sale, and how their prices are steadily rising. I’ve noticed a few people in networking groups talking about starting a website, or they have one but aren’t sure how to best promote it. Hopefully this article will give you a few ideas to help you get your website noticed.

Why have one?

According to E-Commerce Statistics, there are more than 2.14 billion online shoppers worldwide, with E-retail sales projected to grow to 5.4 trillion (in dollars) in 2022. And 68% of online shoppers search a product on Google before buying.

So, the more places that your business can be seen and found online, the better. Whilst online shop sites are great and help push your business to their wider audience, you still don’t own it – and they can have glitches that effect your business. With your website, you own it! But why have one?

  • Promote your business 24/7 – you can sell even when you’re asleep!
  • Builds your reputation and credibility. A website gives you the chance to not only show your products or services for the world to see, but they can see the quality and price, can look at recommendations and comments from customers, and a website gives you the space to tell your audience a bit more about yourself and your business – how you started etc. Not everyone will want to know this, but there are those who like to know who they’re buying from, and your website gives that personal service.
  • First impression – Not only does having a website make you more credible, but it also shows that your business is established and that you are experienced at what you do. Even if your competitors are stronger than you, a well-built, mobile friendly website can entice customers to choose you instead. You might operate your business from the tiniest desk space in the corner of your dining room, or make your products in your tiny spare bedroom, but when you have a website, your customers don’t see this. All they see is the power of your brand – size doesn’t matter!
  • Advertise your business – Your website is your ultimate advertising tool. For a relatively small investment in the cost of setting up your website, you can reach millions of people. It is that one brochure that the entire world has access to – no printing and re-printing when you have new products – you just add them online at the click of a button. You can include tons more information and images than you could afford to put into a brochure…or that there is space for in online shop sites or social media. It’s a fantastic marketing tool that is constantly relevant and up to date.
  • Saves you time – Your website can tell people who you are, where you are and what you do. Without a website, you may spend endless wasted time on the telephone or email giving people directions to where you are, giving details of the products you sell or the services you offer. Your website gives all these details in one, easy to access space, available 24/7. Not only does it give these basic details, but it also gives more detailed information about your products. Then, when people do contact you, it’s generally about something more specific or to actually buy from you or use your services.
  • Reach a huge audience – A website puts you in front of a worldwide audience. Business often comes from word of mouth, and this is a fantastic way to get local business. You may have business cards that you give out at craft fayres or commercial networking events, which is great, but to expand and reach customers that don’t know you, the internet is the way forward. And if you do give out business cards, having your own website looks professional and gives something for the recipients to look at when they get home after an event.
  • Customer Services – Your customers are the most important part of your business. You can improve the service you give them by including FAQs and a Contact Us page on your website. Customers can not only leave comments and recommendations, but they can also ask questions. You can collect your customers email addresses, and with their permission, can send them regular updates about new products or services through your email newsletter. This makes them feel valued and valued customers will come back to you time after time.

How to promote your website

Now you know the importance of having a website and its benefits, how do you promote it to reach that wider audience?

Before I start on this, make sure that your website homepage gives readers the information they need, quickly and succinctly. You need to include:

  • Who you are
  • What you can do for them – the main benefits or your products/services
  • How they can contact you
  • How they can make a purchase
  • CTA – call to action – what you want them to do next.
  • Links to your social media pages

OK. Let’s look at the promotion.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

Now, I see this title and often glaze over! But it doesn’t have to be like that. SEO is just a matter of making sure that your website content includes the terms, keywords, and phrases that your potential customers will use to search for businesses like yours. This involves you knowing who your customers are and what they type into search. Have a brainstorm, produce ideas, and look at what words/phrases your competitor uses.

You can also use a free keywords tool (https://www.wordstream.com/keywords/

You can type in your website address, or your competitor’s website address…then choose your business category from a dropdown box, and the country you are in – it will then show you the most popular down to the least popular keywords that people search for. I must admit, it’s pretty amazing! Try it!

If you have these keywords in your website, in headings or subheadings, as well as in the text, the more likely you will be found by search engines. Focus on your product and service keywords first. For example, if you sell gardening equipment, you might include keywords such as, gardening…gardening tools, growing a garden.

The only thing I would say to avoid is using too many keywords – Google and other search engines will notice if your content is stuffed with keywords – the copy must still be relevant and make sense!   

And don’t forget to optimise images, by adding alternate text, using keywords.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is great as, not only does it improve your SEO, but it also gives useful information for your target audience. There are lots of different ways to include content marketing in your website.

  • Blogging is the obvious one. You can use your blog to give useful information that will help your audience; you can use it to talk about your products or services; use it to introduce new products or talk about special offers or products for a certain time of year, such as Easter or Christmas; is you have a book published or an article published in a magazine, you can give an excerpt and talk about it.

    A blog is a very versatile tool and helps bring traffic, and so potential custom, to your website.
  • Email newsletter is the other most popular form of content marketing for websites. You can have a pop-up box or a ‘click here’ button on your website, which asks your readers to subscribe to your email newsletter. When they sign up, it’s a good idea to have a lead magnet (a freebie that they get for signing up – could be 10% discount on their first order, or a free gift, E-book, checklist, workbook, audio or video, or even a free mini-course. Whatever you choose, it’s important to have something to entice them in.

    Once you have subscribers, you have your own email list and can send out regular emails, whether it be once a week or once a month, and share a bit about yourself, talk about things you’re doing, ask questions, promote your blog, promote your products and share valuable information with them. They have chosen to sign up, or opt-in, so they already like your business. Now it’s down to you to keep them interested…just don’t bombard them with sales talk and selling products, or they will unsubscribe. I also don’t advise sending emails too often. I unsubscribe if I’m getting emails every couple of days as it clogs up my inbox. I only send my email newsletter out once a month, but once a week is OK too – it’s up to you.
  • Podcasts are also good and work much in the same way as a newsletter, but you are talking to your audience via audio. Potential customers can sign up and, the good thing with podcasts is that they can be listened to when your audience are driving to and from work, doing the housework or just sitting quietly. It’s a great tool and becoming increasingly popular.
  • Video is another form of content marketing that can help you promote your business. You can share it on your website, in newsletters, on your social media pages, and you can set up your own YouTube channel to host the videos and reach another audience that way. Video is taking over and set to become even bigger in 2022, so it’s worth thinking about.

Whether you choose blogging, email, podcasts, or video, when you share them in your social media, or on other sites, you can put a link to your website pointing your readers or listeners to go check it out.

Social Media

We all know how effective social media can be in helping us promote our businesses. So long as you post regularly, consistently and give a varied array of posts, you will engage with your target audience. Networking is crucial to social media success, so make sure you join RELEVANT networking groups that will help your business.

You can do the odd post about your website and include a link; you can give a taster of a blog post and include a link. And you can advertise your email subscription. This can be done through posts, reels, or stories – or even live video…and always put a link to your website, so you are driving traffic back.

Update your email signature

This is one that people often don’t think about, but it’s the perfect place to promote your website. Just add your website URL under your name in your signature. It’s easy to do and can be highly effective.

Business Cards

You might send out business cards or thank you cards out with your orders. Make sure they include your website address. Another simple and effective way to promote your business.

Google My Business

Google My Business, or Google Business Profile as it’s now changed its name to, is a free must-have resource if your business relies on local people. It’s simple to use; you register your business and when someone searches for you or something you do, your business will be highlighted to them if they are local to you. You can link your website to your account, share photos and post short paragraph posts, which has an option to include a link. I share my blog posts on mine, as well as posting from time to time about my website and email newsletter.

You can add opening hours, contact information and a host of other things to make it easier for customers to find you in search engine results. The only stipulation is that you must have a Gmail email account to set it up. But worth it.

These are just a few ideas – there are loads more out there, but for starters, these are the ones I would advise to help you get traffic to your website.

As always, if you have any questions, or need help promoting your website, please feel free to message me.

Does Goal Setting leave you feeling lost?

If you have your own business, your business goals for next year should already be set, so you’re ready to make a good start after the holiday season, but if you haven’t got round to it yet, maybe this will help you think about them!

A goal without a plan is just a wish

Every January, I used to set myself resolutions – the usual kind of thing, lose weight; get fitter.

But by the end of January, they were usually all but forgotten, so I don’t tend to do that any more. I’m still aware of the personal things I want to do, but I don’t put the pressure on like I used to.

But with business, I feel I can’t afford to be so blasé – a planned business with structured goals will always be more successful, and reviewing your plans on a regular basis gives you the chance to pick up on anything that is going wrong at an earlier stage.

So where do you start? There are 4 areas to think about….

What is your Mission Statement?

This is a statement that includes what your business is, who you’re selling to, what you’re selling and what is your unique selling proposition that makes you stand out from the crowd?

For example, if you run a dog sitting service in your own home, you might say…

“All dogs in our care live in our house in a safe and secure environment, and are treated as part of our family. We are happy to administer any medication and provide a loving and attentive service to your much loved pet.”

What are your business goals?

Think about where you want your business to be by this time next year. By which percentage do you wish to grow and how many customers do you expect to have? Make sure you have at least one goal that relates to your mission statement and one that links to the financial position of your business.

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Goals need to be SMART….

Specific – for example, my New Year’s Resolution, “I want to get fitter.” This is too vague. Being more specific, I should say, “I will join a gym and go three times a week.”

Measurable – You need to be able to measure your goals – for example, you might want to increase your sales by 25% by this time next year. How would you measure this throughout the year to ensure you are on track? You could break down sales, so you know how many sales you need to make every month to make this happen.

Attainable – goals need to be achievable, so don’t set the bar ridiculously high, such as Del boy in ‘Only Fools and Horses’ – “This time next year, we’ll be millionaires.”

Realistic – in the same way as goals needing to be achievable, they also need to be realistic. You must be both willing and able to work towards them. Only you can decide what is achievable and realistic for you and your business.

Timely – it’s sensible to put a time-frame on each of your goals – this keeps you focused. If you don’t have a time-frame, there is no sense of urgency and you can keep putting off doing anything ‘until tomorrow’…and we all know that tomorrow never comes!

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What are your business strategies?

Strategies are all about what are you going to do to achieve your goals.

Think about the four Ps…

Product(s) – what is it about your product that makes your customers want to buy it? Do you need to change your products in any way to meet your customers’ needs?

Pricing – how do you aim to compete with your competitor’s pricing – do you want to match it… undercut them… or do you want to charge more for a more quality product and service?

Place – where and how are you going to sell your products? Do you sell them yourself or outsource them to retail outlets? Do you sell online or face to face? You might do a little of everything.

Promotion – how are you going to let your existing and potential customers know about your products? This includes things like advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, PR and personal selling.

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What action do you need to take to achieve your goals?

How are you going to achieve your goals? If we take the ‘I want to increase my sales by 25%’ scenario, how will you do that? You might decide to launch a new, attractive product…you might give a discount if customers spend over a set amount, or do a ‘Buy one, get one free’ offer for a specific week.

Another scenario might be that you want to re-brand your business to make you stand out from your competitors. This will have a financial implication, so that needs to be in the action plan – your goal would be to re-brand, your action would be around how you will afford to do that – how many products would you need to sell, for example, to cover the cost?

Once you have decided the action(s) for achieving each goal, you need to know how you can measure the success of each action. Measurement is very important as it gives you an insight into what works well for your business and what doesn’t.

If you plan ahead, you stand a much better chance of succeeding. So, give a little time to setting your goals and sorting out how you are going to achieve them.

One of my new online digital products is a workbook on goal setting, which takes you through each stage step-by-step, so saves you bundles of time and energy.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

What is digital marketing and how does it work in 2026?

Home office desk with laptop showing analytics dashboard, smartphone on stand, notebook with notes, coffee mug, and small plant.

A Simple Guide for Small Businesses on a Budget

Running a small business in 2026 means one thing is almost impossible to ignore… digital marketing.

The good news is that you don’t need a massive budget, a marketing agency, or mega technical skills to make digital marketing work for your business.

Most small businesses can grow faster by using simple, low-cost online marketing strategies consistently. So, what are they and how can they work for you?

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the process of promoting your business online.

Instead of using traditional advertising like newspapers, flyers, or billboards, digital marketing helps businesses reach customers through:

  • Search engines like Google
  • Social media platforms
  • Email marketing
  • Websites and blogs
  • Online videos
  • Paid online ads
  • Messaging apps

The goal is simple. Help more people discover your business, trust your brand, and become paying customers!

How Does it work?

Right now, digital marketing is more automated, more personalised, and more focused on helpful content for your audience.

Customers expect businesses to:

  • Be easy to find online
  • Respond quickly
  • Share useful information
  • Have a professional website or social media presence
  • Offer smooth online experiences

If you really struggle with creating posts, writing captions, writing emails etc, AI can help. But for me, the key word here is ‘help’. I wouldn’t advocate using it all the time as it can be really obvious if you’ve used AI to write for you – and you need to still keep your tone of voice and your personality. Whilst AI can kind of replicate that, it’s not quite you, so make sure if you do use AI, you check all facts (it can often be wrong) and ensure it sounds like you.

Types of Digital Marketing

There are five main types of digital marketing. They are:

Social Media Marketing

Social media involves using your content to attract and engage your potential customers. This might be through…

  • Product photos
  • Short videos
  • Tips and tutorials
  • Customer reviews
  • Behind-the-scenes content
  • Special offers

People spend hours every day on social media. Good content helps your business stay visible and build trust. But, don’t spread yourself too thin – you only need to choose one or two platforms, where you know your customers hang out.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO helps your business appear in Google search results.

For example, if someone searches:

  • “best bakery near me”
  • “affordable plumber in London”
  • “dog grooming services”

SEO helps your business show up.

Google looks for websites that are helpful, fast to load, easy to navigate, trustworthy and relevant to their search.

Simple SEO Tips that will help your small business

  • Create a Google Business Profile
  • Use clear page titles
  • Add your location to your website
  • Write helpful blog posts
  • Ask customers for reviews
  • Make your website mobile-friendly

SEO takes time, but it can bring free traffic for years.

Content Marketing

Content marketing means creating useful information that helps potential customers.

This could include:

  • Blog articles
  • Videos
  • Guides
  • FAQs
  • Tutorials
  • Email newsletters

Content is the thing that really matters. Customers don’t want to see you constantly selling to them, they want to be educated about your products or services, see behind the scenes, find out more about you as a person – people trust businesses that have a mix of different type of content instead of constantly selling.

Helpful content builds credibility and improves SEO at the same time.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the cheapest and most effective digital marketing methods.

You collect customer email addresses and send:

  • Newsletters
  • Promotions
  • Updates
  • Helpful tips
  • Event announcements

Email still works well, because unlike social media, you OWN your email list. I know I’ve said this before and it is so true!

With your own email, algorithms can’t suddenly reduce your visibility and your account can’t suddenly be restricted or shut down. People sign up to your newsletter BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. They want to hear from you and find out more about you, your business and what you can offer.

Many email tools offer free plans for small businesses, such as MailChimp or Mailerlite, until you reach a certain number of subscribers, which really helps.

Paid Advertising

Paid ads can help businesses reach people quickly. You can choose from:

  • Google Ads
  • Facebook Ads
  • Instagram Ads
  • TikTok Ads
  • YouTube Ads

You pay to show your business to targeted audiences, for example, people in your local area, customers interested in your services or people searching for specific products.

If you decide to go this route, start small. You can pay as little as £5 – £10 a day, which can help you test what works for your business.

I personally don’t use ads, as I’ve found I don’t have to, but I know a lot of businesses do use them and it works well for them. Is this something you’ve tried? Let me know in the comments how you found it?

What Has Changed in Digital Marketing

There are a few trends that have changed over the past year. Here are some examples of the newer trends that you might want to look at.

AI is everywhere!

AI is the obvious one – you can’t miss it! You can’t go on any social media platform without seeing AI content. Some of it is so obviously fake, but if you use AI, you want it to still look and feel like you and your business, so you must be careful how you use it.

Most advice floating around about AI is to use it as a helper and NOT a replacement for real human connections. I use it for research, but I always check the facts and ensure that anything it finds for me is written in my own tone of voice. It can be useful for:

  • Researching content
  • Writing content
  • Creating images
  • Answering customer questions
  • Scheduling marketing campaigns
  • Analysing customer data

It’s up to you how you use it but always remember: Customers still value authenticity.

And that’s all I’m going to say!  

Short Videos Perform Best

Short-form video continues to grab attention on social media platforms.

Quick videos on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts often reach more people than traditional posts.

You don’t need expensive equipment. You can usually get a short video done quickly and efficiently using just a smartphone and good lighting. That could be via a ring light or natural light from a big window, or film outside!

Local marketing still works

Many customers prefer supporting nearby businesses. That might be for many reasons but could include no postage costs, if they can pick your product up in person, or just that they prefer to support local businesses.

For a small business, this means that…

  • Local SEO matters more
  • Customer reviews matter more
  • Google Maps visibility matters more

For small businesses, local digital marketing can often perform better than national campaigns by big businesses.

Digital marketing on a limited budget

Digital marketing doesn’t have to be expensive – in fact, there are many free tools out there that can help you. The key is to keep it simple.

Online presence

The minimum you should have should be…

  • A simple website
  • A Google Business Profile
  • One active social media page

Your website should clearly explain:

  • What you offer
  • Who you help
  • How customers can contact you

Focus on Helpful Content

Have a mix of content to keep your audience’s attention.

Simple content ideas include:

  • Tips
  • Tutorials
  • FAQs
  • Customer reviews/photo/success stories
  • Product demonstrations
  • Short videos – packing or unpacking a product/ talking to camera about your business or introducing yourself.

I always bang on about 80% of content being entertaining, engaging, inspirational and only 20% selling.  

Having a mix of content helps people get to know you and your business and builds rapport and trust.

Reviews

We all know how lovely it is to get reviews and recommendations – it’s happy dance time! Positive online reviews help build credibility quickly, so never be afraid to ask your customers to put a review on your social media page, or on your Google profile. It all helps build that trust and most people will look at a review before they buy, so they’re really important..

Use Free or Low-Cost Tools

There are lots of free tools you can use. Here are just a few:

  • Canva for graphics
  • Mailchimp/Mailerlite for email marketing
  • ChatGPT for brainstorming content ideas
  • And you can use Meta Business Suite on Facebook to schedule your posts for Facebook and Instagram.

Don’t forget your analytics

Regularly check up on how your posts/emails/website is performing by looking at the insights or analytics.

Pay attention to:

  • Website visits
  • Phone calls
  • Messages
  • Sales
  • Email signups
  • Social media engagement

This will help you see what works and what doesn’t. Then you can repurpose popular posts and you get to know exactly what your audience likes.

Common mistakes that we all make

The biggest mistake that most small businesses make is to spread themselves too thin by trying to be on too many platforms or taking on too much all at once. This can quickly lead to overwhelm and burnout. And none of us want that.

Start small!

Here are some other examples of mistakes that small businesses make…

Posting without a plan -Random posting usually produces weak results.  It’s a good idea to know what you want to post – create a simple weekly schedule – maybe have a weekly theme. Consistency matters more than perfection.

Selling too much – This is my age-old advice – 80% helpful content and only 20% selling. Your audience follow you because they like what you do – but they don’t want to constantly see you selling to them. They want to know more about you, your business and how your products or services can help them. If you just sell non-stop, you’ll lose followers and people will scroll by your posts.

Ignoring mobile users – Most customers now browse on smartphones. Make sure that your website and content, such as blogs and emails work well on mobile devices. Most hosting platforms will have a button you can press to check this before you publish.

Conclusion

Digital marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. A simple strategy would be to…

  1. Build a simple website
  2. Set up your Google Business Profile
  3. Choose one social media platform
  4. Post helpful content at least three times per week, every day if you can
  5. Collect customer reviews
  6. Build an email list
  7. Track results monthly

If you have a budget, you could think about small ads to test if they work.

For small businesses, success often comes from doing the basics consistently:

  • Showing up online
  • Creating useful content
  • Building trust
  • Staying visible
  • Connecting with customers

The businesses that win are not always the ones with the biggest budgets.

They are usually the ones that stay consistent, helpful, and easy to find online. Start small, learn as you go and you’ll get there.

If you want help with any aspects of your digital marketing, drop me a message or email and we can have an informal chat. I offer a free 30-minute consultation.