The 4 Best Digital Marketing Platforms for a Consulting Business

January 31, 2013 By 5 Comments

It’s easy to drown in the different forms of digital marketing out there if you’re running a consulting business. Because time is precious, particularly if you work as a consult, juggling every aspect of your business, you need to focus on doing what’s imperative – not just helpful.

To help keep things simple but effective, here are the content marketing platforms I think you need to include in 2013 as part of your strategic online marketing plan.

1. Blog.

Do not ignore the power of a blog. They help get you found in Google and other search engines, generate leads and give prospects an insight to your core skills. What’s more, a blog is full of personality. If you write in a tone of voice that reflects just who you are instead of “corporate speak” you’ll show customers a personal side of who you are. This is important because we do business with people, not businesses.

Get a blog right and it will bring new customers to your door. If you’re thinking of starting a business blog or have let yours go on hiatus too long, check out this post on what makes a great business blog.
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23 Things You Need to Know About Online Marketing Now

May 17, 2011 By 20 Comments

I‘m regularly asked what a small business has to do to succeed with online marketing. This is, of course, not easy to deal with in five minutes; however, if you want the splatter gun answer, here are some of the things I’ve learned over the last 5 years since I’ve been running Jontus Media.

Online marketing

1. Your website is everything! If it’s down, you’re literally dead in the water so choose your web host really, really carefully. I personally use Enginehosting. They rock.

2. Invest in good website design from the offset. You wouldn’t walk into a store that was half finished, looked like it was in need of serious repair and badly stocked now would you? Your credibility starts with your website

3. Make sure that if you go with a designer for your site that they teach you how to use the site properly.

4. Start a blog as soon as possible using WordPress and host it on your own domain. Install must-have plugins to help you with things like site maps, database backups, etc. Make sure your blog is targeted at your key audience and that all the content you generate is for them and not yourself.

5. Ensure your website is optimized for search engines with a site map, great code, keyword rich title tags and regular content. There are plugins to help you achieve this but you’ll have to generate the content yourself (or get other people to do it for you).

6. Learn how to write blog headlines that grab the attention of your audience. Think more like a sensational news hack than a conservative business person.

7. Create audio and video content to complement text posts. People take in information in different ways and you should appeal to as many prospects as possible.

8. Today’s best practice is tomorrow’s dinosaur. Never stop learning about changes in the industry, new communications channels and so on.

9. Track your data in any way that works for you. Data (or analytics as some prefer to call it) is what will make you make informed decisions about what’s working and what’s not.

10. If something’s not working, change it. We all learn through our mistakes. Even successful online marketers. [Read more...]

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More on B2B Blogging & Conversions

September 6, 2010 By 2 Comments

I‘ve got a guest post up on Mark Schaefer’s brilliant blog today about how business blogs often fail to convert visitors into clients.

By means of a follow up I was thinking about how we as online communications, marketer and PR folk can convince businesses that they really should invest in blogging.

It’s Not About Conversion

When it comes down to it, my experience with clients has shown that blogs aren’t really about converting to sales. Yes, they might be an important part in the process of generating a sale, funnelling site visitors to specific landing pages; but as anyone involved in B2B marketing will tell you, the sales process is much longer than B2C. You have to convince different levels of an organisation that your product or service is just what you need. And persuading everyone through to the top brass can take time.

So I tend to see blogs are part of that initial journey to the sale.

For small online businesses, or would-be internet marketers, blogs are a vital cog in the sales wheel because so many internet marketers make their money with affiliate links or the sale of ebooks or training courses. But the techniques they use, won’t / don’t necessarily wash if you’re selling printers; or consultation services.

So What Are B2B Blogs Good For Then?

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Content Marketing is a Commitment, Not a Campaign.

August 11, 2010 By 11 Comments

It takes time to for online content marketing to yield results. Despite what those marketing snake oil salesmen might tell you.

In the old days before the internet you could grab an audience’s attention by the throat with a 30 second ad on TV that literally burst onto the screens, propelling them to your store.

content marketing commitment

Showing commitment

Nowadays, whilst old school interruptive marketing still gets attention – I’m specifically thinking about the now infamous Old Spice video that originally ran back in February on TV before being superseded by the short-n-snappy vox pops that ran on YouTube in the summer – one of the best ways for a business to get noticed is to publish great content online. After all, there are over 12 billion searches on Google in the US per month alone – and many of these are for services, products or information.

Trouble is that intrinsically valuable content that connects with your target audience, showing your key value proposition, takes time to bubble to the surface of Google’s search engine results. It’s not found easily if you haven’t already built plenty of online equity. That’s why there are so many search engine optimization (SEO) experts out there, peddling their wares of “Get to the Top of Google Search”.

So beware. Agencies that promise an all-bells-and-whistles blog marketing campaign will yield quick results are either world leaders in online marketing and communications or planning to move country the minute your organization has handed over the cash for the work they’ve done.

For example, an online content marketing campaign aimed at generating more traffic to your site is not something to bash out in a week. Sure, unique visitors sent to your site via Google when searching for your keyword phrases have a good chance of converting to sales. Trouble is, the new blog you’ve just started writing as part of your latest marketing campaign, in all likelihood, isn’t going to help you capture the kind of search traffic you need to keep you in business if you’re struggling to take care of payroll. Blogs can take 3 – 6 months of careful business blogging with a WordPress theme optimised for SEO and cleverly worked-out keywords to really start converting visitors – and that’s assuming you’ve invested in great landing pages and call-to-actions across your site. [Read more...]

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3 Questions We Couldn’t Answer Before, But Can Now

July 14, 2010 By 9 Comments

After using and recommending the WordPress Thesis Theme for over a year – and being very happy with the results – it was time to try Headway. So here’s my first question:

1) Is Headway Any Good?

Several customers have been increasingly asking about Headway – and Danny Brown always talks it up – so I decided to get my hands dirty first with a test site, and then with my very own blog.

It’s extremely easy for newbies to use – as long as you watch the training videos. But if you’ve got a bit of coding experience you’ll get it very quickly. It took me about an hour to convert my existing installation of Thesis to Headway and included some nice tweaks.

The BIG advantage of Headway is that you can make every page on your site look different. This is incredibly useful is you’re making landing pages or trying to improve your calls to actions.

So, yes, Headway is pretty good. For start-ups and small businesses looking to launch a blog without investing massive resources I’d give it a go. [Read more...]

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Can You Build a Community Around Your B2B Blog?

June 22, 2010 By 11 Comments

So you’ve been running a business blog for a while now. Maybe it’s hosted on at a different domain to your regular business site, maybe it’s not. Maybe you try to be more informal, more conversational than you allow yourself to be on the “real” site.

But what if it’s not working?

  • What if 90 percent of your daily traffic is from new visitors that don’t hang around?
  • What if Google Analytics tells you that your I came, I saw, I puked (Bounce) rate is 80 percent plus? (Tip: Check out this site for the best on using Google Analytics
  • What if no one’s leaving comments, questions or retweeting your posts?

And what if the Hippo (Highest paid person in your organisation) is complaining that the business blog that was given the OK earlier this year is failing miserably and due for the axe and your job along with it?

Nightmare on B2B Blog Street

b2b community When disaster strikes and you’re failing to build a significant community around your business blog, it’s time for action. Ask yourself some searching questions and try to develop a strategy that you can implement and monitor to turn things around. What’s more, make sure you put a system in place that will measure your progress!

Do the Data

Rather than just making a subjective assessment of your site and flaying around in the dark as you try to turn things around, turn to concrete data. Look at what Google Analytics tells you about the performance of your site (Cf Content Marketing and Google Analytics 101 – podcast).

For example, three of my favourite questions for clients are:

  • What are the top entry pages for your blog?
  • What pages get the most clicks from unique users?
  • What pages have the highest bounce rate?

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