Marketing – SEO – Advertising – Social Media – Analytics – Web Design
Interview with Nick van der Walle, head honcho at Astute Graphics, that has found a niche creating design software plugins for Adobe Illustrator.
We’ve been working with Nick for a few years now but Ben wanted to dig a little deeper into his background and how he’s built a successful company with a predominately US audience from rural Herefordshire.
Nick also takes us through his development process, the importance of a great product and 2 tips.
Few business leaders these days can ignore the impact that social media has on their organisation, but how many don’t really understand how to interact or engage with it? Quite a few I’d wager. Yet social media is an open connection to the largest community in the world, and as such our social media personality can have a significant impact on us, and our company’s reputation, it’s sales and ultimately, its survival.
Lets take Twitter, for example. Does it really matter that we use some funky obscure handle that makes us look a bit fun and quirky? Well, actually yes it does, the simpler our profile name, the better.
Ultimately, branding and marketing is about the long haul, you can’t set up a twitter account and leave it to do it’s thing, it needs investment of time and active participation, and only those who do that will see the real benefits.
If you’re feeling down, build something says Rands.
“When I am in a foul mood, I have a surefire way to improve my outlook – I build something. A foul mood is a stubborn beast and it does not give ground easily. It is an effort to simply get past the foulness in order to start building, but once the building has begun, the foul beast loses ground.”
Like Rands, I often find building lego models with my children settles the mind after a day with my head in a screen or two. There’s a simple pleasure to it, something I can plan, build and complete in 20 minutes after dinner.
Sadly larger scale projects like my office, a truly blank slate in the garden, require a little more consideration and “consumption” of information before I feel ready to begin.
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Ben
Heart warming video about a book sharing idea that brings a little light and colour to Hackney’s residents.
The Little Free Library – Clapton from Lucio Casellato on Vimeo.
“Sharing, free knowledge, information, technology, education, future, happiness, beauty, these are only some of the things people stop to talk about in front of the Little Free Library. This is a little ‘house’ in the middle of Clapton with free books and knowledge for all, just come over and take a book, give a book. Or maybe have a conversation about the destiny of mankind, or hear a poem, stop and think.”
Try new things and experiment, especially where they involve giving first.
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Ben
Good article in Fast Company on why people like round numbers and why you shouldn’t be on the wrong side of them, numbers that is not Fast Company.
“lumping things into round-number groups and viewing everything outside them as inferior. So the difference between items ranked No. 10 and No. 11 feels enormous and significant, even if it’s actually quite minimal or unknown.”
The following paragraph is particularly useful to know
“In another experiment, Isaac and Schindler found that when test participants were exposed to a sharp1-numbered list–like a Top 19–their perceived gap between 10 and 11 diminished. The business lessons for the Number 11s of the world is pretty clear: crack the Top 10 at whatever the cost or change the reference point to Top 12.”
1 Not ending in 0 or 5
Marketing used to be about companies pushing their ads in front of people in order to sell; now it’s about engagement with the audience. There has always been competition in business but with such a plethora of options these days, companies must stand out in a very positive way, they almost have to seduce potential clients like a new sweetheart.
Less than a decade ago, few people thought of social media as a useful channel for online marketing, now small businesses are embracing it and are reaping the benefits with increased customer engagement and sales. From Facebook to Twitter and Instagram to LinkedIn, some of the savviest businesses are establishing a presence on social media and capitalising on the massive exposure available from it.
Whichever social media platform you choose will depend on your individual preferences of course, but to some extent the nature of your business can determine the most suitable for your purposes. LinkedIn for example is the platform of choice for some professionals because of the more formal nature of their business services, whereas Facebook and Twitter are less formal, and reflect more of an individual’s or company’s personality, while still providing opportunities to promote the business. Twitter gives valuable exposure to small businesses and Pinterest is highly visual, which businesses can benefit from using the impact of images to attract interest.
Once we’ve identified the best platform(s) for our business we cannot rest on our laurels. Continued interaction is important in keeping people interested and they will, in turn, reward us with their loyalty, and their custom.
Content can go out-of-date very quickly and if we are not updating it, our followers may just head off somewhere else. Also, we can get insights into what is being said before it ever becomes a problem. The best performing businesses constantly monitor and measure activity and responses and adapt their strategies accordingly.
Social media is a stage upon which we can stand, view the landscape and make a judgement about where we need to be heading to effectively market and promote our business. It reaches the ears of so many more potential opportunities than was ever possible before its invention. It does the hard work connecting us to the people that matter to our business and we reap the rewards.
As you may know from previous posts, the Rather Inventive team is virtual. We all work remotely. But every now and then it’s nice to meet up with the rest of the team and some of our clients for some fun. Our most recent social event saw us at Wharton Court Food Centre near Leominster where we had a fab session with photographer Jay Watson of All Seeing Eye Images in Hereford. (more…)
I recently required the services of an out-of-hours GP (yes, I know, silly me) only to be put through to the new NHS 111 service. My answers to the operator’s questions were duly guided through a computerised diagnostic tool and a paramedic dispatched to treat the cardiac arrest I wasn’t having. I don’t even want to contemplate what this cost the NHS but I’m guessing the difference between a paramedic being sent out to a rural area versus the patient ably making their way to a surgery to see an out-of-hours GP is quite extensive. (more…)
We use WordPress to build our websites. We use it because we think it’s the best web content management system out there. (more…)
This video shows that the “lone nut” who starts a trend is important, but if the trend is to get going it takes a few brave souls to join in. These first brave souls are known as first followers. They’re vital if a trend is to become important because they give it credibility and show “the masses” that it’s OK to join in.
If you were one of the first people to sign up to Twitter or use Pinterest to market your business, you can give yourself a pat on the back. You were a first follower. You helped to make them the business tools they are today. You were also one of the first to take advantage of what they could offer your business. But aside from spotting something that will help your business before anyone else catches on to it, where else can we apply the first follower principle in an online context? And how does it help?Let’s take one example. In an environment such as LinkedIn you can be one of the first to answer people’s questions in forums, fill out surveys or offer an opinion. This raises your profile by showing people you’re an industry commentator and a “go to” expert. It also shows the person you’re answering that you’re supportive and interested in what they have to say – and we all love to think that! And you’ll often find that other people who join in after you will often refer back to your comment, raising your profile still further and giving you more credibility.
We might not all be switched on enough to spot the new Twitter or Pinterest. But we can all show our support for smaller things in smaller ways. And doing that can be just as important and give your business results that are just as important.
If you want to get the real story on the behaviour of your customers, readers, etc., don’t rely on self-reported data. While such data can be fine for simple facts, like, “Did you eat breakfast today?” it will rarely answer questions like, “Why do you prefer Grey Goose vodka?” (more…)
I’m not a big watcher of YouTube videos but there are some themes that just captivate me. Well these videos do just that (much to my wife’s annoyance).
“Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae or rather the numerous covers found on YouTube, which propelled the original’s success, demonstrate the explosive effect of social media and the awsome creative tools many of us have available – From the geeky Star Wars to my favourite by from the Cookie Monster (above) or even a poorly shot but funny effort from a Harvard Baseball team.
What does all this mean? It just shows how people are driven to do some great (or just plain funny) things when they want to be part of something greater than themselves
‘Smart marketers in this circle acknowledge that their product or service isn’t for everyone, but bend over backwards to be sure that some people will be able to fall in love with it.’
This resonds with me but it’s not easy. He goes on to say.
‘When the thing you sell has communication built in, when it is remarkable and worth talking about, when it changes the game–marketing seems a lot easier. Of course, that’s because you did the marketing when you invented the thing, saving you the expense and trouble of yelling about it.’
If you can do this you have something special.
Here at Rather Inventive we build our websites using a tool called WordPress. It offers lots of benefits, but perhaps the most important of them is how easy it is to use. In terms of adding, moving and removing content, just half an hour of training will get you going. It means that once we’ve built your website, you can really take ownership of it and develop it over time. It also means you don’t need to pay anyone to maintain it because you can look after it yourself.
(more…)Seth Godin on Reconsidering decisions
“Jay Levinson used to say that you should keep your ad campaign even after your best customers, your wife and your partner get bored with it. Change it when the accountant says it’s time.”
Clients often tell me how they don’t like the design anymore, or it’s time for a change. Sometimes it’s better to just wait and move onto more important things.
In my last post, we looked at how to create a sitemap for your website. Now we’re going to review some of the ways to make the content of the site customer-focused and useful. (more…)
When thinking about your sitemap, there are two things you need to bear in mind. What do your customers need? and then what do search engines need? Answer both questions with your sitemap and you’ve made a good start on a great site. (more…)
Most people turn to a web designer when they need a new website because they know that making a good first impression is vital. But people use the content to decide whether or not to buy, so it’s vital that it’s as professional as the design.
If you’re thinking about writing your website content yourself, here are five reasons why you should consider hiring a web copywriter instead.
So there you go, five reasons to use a web copywriter. I hope they’ve convinced you to consider one for your website project.
While parking in Chepstow for our team meet-up I was short 30p for the pay and display. I bounded over to the Tourist Information office in the hope they might break a note for me – The kind woman that greeted me was unable to change my note but instead gave me the 30p I needed. Thank you, who ever you were.
To further brighten my day the cafe we had decided to meet in had the best breakfast sandwich I have ever seen. See the picture below, it was the sour dough club if you’re interested. It really was amazing!
Just like every other marketing medium, a website has to earn its keep. The good news is that you can find out a lot more about what people do when they encounter your website than when they come across your offline marketing messages.
How many people visit your website is just the start. You can also find out:
And armed with the knowledge about how people are interacting with your website you can tweak it and tweak it until it is getting the response you want.
When we make changes you can:
That’s all very well, I hear you say, but exactly how do you measure all this? The chances are that your website provider will have a statistics package, but it may not offer all the information you need.
The solution is Google Analytics. It’s free, simple to install (just a matter of copying and pasting some code onto each page of your site) and provides a wealth of information. So if you’re not impressed with your stats package or you don’t have one, I’d always recommend Google Analytics as the tool to turn to.
Learn more with our Guide to Google Analytics.
Here are the last five suggestions for using internet marketing to promote your business on a budget. (You can read the first five here.) (more…)
The web offers a wealth of tools that can help you market your business on a shoestring. In this post and the next one, I’ll take a look at ten ways the internet can help promote your business. Spend 10% of your marketing time on each one and you can build your business on a budget. Here goes … (more…)
You may have heard of “features and benefits” when talking about marketing your business. Here´s a quick guide to what they are and how they help your business. (more…)
First things first. What are keywords? They are the words or phrases that someone looking for a business or service like yours will type into a search engine to find you. And if those words and phrases don’t feature in the content, their website won’t come up when someone types them into a search engine.
As a general rule, your keyword list shouldn’t be very long. (If you’ve got 150 words or phrases in your list, you’re either running a multinational business with hundreds of products or you’ve got too many words on the list). Around 10 to 12 words or phrases is plenty for the average site.
So how do you choose them?
Brainstorm all the words that come to mind when thinking of your business. Don’t worry at this stage how many you’ve got. Now look at each of them in turn and ask “if I was looking for a business like mine, would I type this into Google?”. There are three possible answers:
Remove all the “nos” from the list and combine all the “only ifs”.
The next step is to check your list.
Enter them into Google (or your search engine of choice) and see what comes up. If your competitors or websites similar to yours are coming up, you’ve probably got the right keywords. If they aren’t, you can remove them from the list.
Ask your customers what they would type into a search engine if they wanted to find a business like yours. If they match yours, that’s great. If they don’t, add them to the list.
Use Google’s keyword research tool. This will provide you with suggestions you may not have thought of. It will also give you an idea of how competitive your chosen keywords are so you can assess your chances of appearing high up in the rankings. And this is extremely important.
The last and perhaps most important step in this process is to assess your chances of appearing high up in the results when people search for them.
Let’s take an example. If you sell cars, you might think your top keyword is “cars” and that you need to be on the first page of results when people search on “cars”. But realistically
You won’t be because you’ll be competing with every single website in the world that’s about cars. The chance of being in the first one hundred pages, let alone the first page or the number one spot are remote, to say the least. Optimise your site on the word “cars”, you’ll never be found by your potential customers. The result? A website that isn’t doing its job.
But why don’t you want to be? Because anyone searching for the word “cars” is unlikely to be looking for you. They’ll be looking for photographs, to find out how they work, to find out how many there are, etc etc. The one thing they aren’t doing is looking for you. So if you did manage to get onto the first page, you’d get lots of visitors, certainly. But how many would turn into customers?
Optimise your site on the type of car you sell (luxury cars, vintage cars, red cars) and where you are (Herefordshire, Norfolk ) instead and you’ll only be competing against other people who sell the type of cars you do where you do. So your chances of being at the top of the rankings are better. What’s more, if people type “vintage cars for sale Herefordshire” into a search engine, they’re definitely looking for you. The result? A website that’s doing its job.
Think of it like this. If you work in a shop, you don’t need every person in town visiting your shop, you just need every person who is looking to buy what you sell. Get your keywords right and you’ll attract those people.