It’s a simple fact that email marketing is massively effective. Across our own businesses, I can tell you that we achieve a little over 5% conversion rate from emails sent that sell something. That compares to just over 1% from any of our “selling” web pages.

It should be obvious – anyone who is engaged enough to have signed up to your newsletter list has a level of trust in what you suggest to them, and they are far more likely to buy from you when you ask them to do so.  read more »

You might be asking yourself why you haven’t heard from me here for some months, and in case you are, here’s the top line:

Lanzarote Information, our flag ship site, continues to amaze and enthral me. With over 5,000 visits a day, a social media community of 30,000 and some increasingly blue chip advertisers, it’s everything I hoped for when we set out on the road the create a sustainable on line business. Our other smaller sites are growing and blossoming, benefiting from the learning we went through on the big one. I’m continuing to work extremely hard with my consultancy clients (some would say making hay before the sun sets on the European economy!) and I’m back to my triathlon training after a small operation.

But this blog has never been about me.

It was always about helping people to do similar things, using the experience I have gained over the last few years. And it’s gratifying to know that despite my relative absence from these pages, it soldiers on doing just that.

The most recent examples are an old friend Marc Johnston, who is a brilliant musician, and who has created a fabulous blog at www.marc-johnston.com

He followed my Beginner’s Guide to Blogging course (free here ) and then got in touch with Sue Almond.

 read more »

I’ve been in touch with Glynis for a few years now, and as she says in this guest post, she’s one of the many people who have been through my Beginner's Guide to Blogging course.

People hear or see the term, Self Growth, and immediately think that there will be deep thinking, meditation, candles lit, and long discussions about what the meaning of life is. Although you can certainly go this route by finding a life coach that specializes in in the spiritual area of self growth, Many things about improving yourself can be learned in activities in your daily life.

When I took part in Mike's email course, The Beginner's Guide to Blogging, I actually thought I had all my ducks in a row and taking this free course was just to make sure that I did not have any ducks wandering off. What I soon discovered was my knowledge was sorely lacking in any depth.

Mike's course and my journey with my blog since then has instructed me on some aspects of life the I have wanted to improve on for a long time. These are things that come in handy every day for whatever you are doing.

Organization Skills

With blogging, if you are not organized, your chances of succeeding are slim at best. There must be a plan before you think about launching your blog. The ultimate goal, the sub-goals, the tasks, the brainstorming, it all takes planning, organization.

Moreover, you will need to schedule the time you need to put into this endeavor. Doing small jobs with your blog when you just feel like it is not going to give you the desired results you was.  read more »

There are few aspects of the online world evolving as fast as digital marketing, as we saw time and time again in 2012. Last year seemingly moved at a frantic pace, with the march of the mobile devices changing the way that marketing professionals approached their online campaigns, as well as the spread of video across the digital marketing sphere. With the advent of a new year, interested parties are wanting to know what will be the big areas of innovation and consolidation over the next 12 months.

Video set to open more eyes  read more »

I can still remember the first time I heard of Google. My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) worked at a trendy IT company in the 1990’s. I called into her office one day and saw the plain white Google home page on her screen and asked her about it.

Like most of you, since then, Google has become part of my every day life. I use their browser, their docs, all our emails are routed through their excellent apps service, I love Translate, I use Google +, I buy Adwords adverts. 

In short, I’ve pretty much embraced everything Google.  read more »

It’s the most common phrase I hear when talking to small business people.

So let’s start with the basics

• Salespeople who have “The gift of the gab” are seldom successful – good sales people “listen” much more than they “talk.”
• Salespeople who don’t have passion about the product or service they are selling are seldom successful – anybody who tells you they could sell “anything to anyone” is talking rubbish
• Salespeople who are negative and natural complainers are seldom successful
• Selling to people who don’t have a genuine need or want for your product or service isn’t good for you or for them

Now let’s look at those the other way around – are you good at listening to people? Are you passionate about your product or service? Are you positive?  read more »

I’ve had an intensely frustrating time over the last few weeks. For a specific project, I’ve been trying to speak to or email some buyers in large companies.

And they are the hardest people in the world to get through to!

I’ve never done this before, so it might not even be a new phenomenon, but these guys seem to employ every trick in the book to avoid speaking to potential suppliers. And I simply don’t understand it!

Surely it’s their job to be contactable?

Surely it’s a major part of their role to be available to hear about new products?

How many fantastic opportunities to be first to market with some hot new product  are they squandering for their companies?  read more »

For those of us who work online in small businesses, we face a perennial problem. We end up doing everything ourselves!

And that’s because we don’t generally have a team of people to delegate tasks to, and we either can’t afford, or don’t want to take on staff to take away some of the workload.

Many of the people I work with now employ virtual assistants – the beauty is they are there when you need them, but you’re not paying for them when you don’t.

The thing to consider is the value of your own time, and the fact that it’s limited. I’m sure, like me, that you have a whole list of jobs on your to-do list that need doing, and which you’re perfectly capable of doing, but that you keep putting off, because you know you’ll earn more income another way.

Using a VA to do those tasks enables you to focus on doing the things that are most effective for you.

Some friends of mine – Ceri and Jen are running a VA business based in the UK, and I thought it would be a good time to ask them to share what they do, how they do it, and how they can help you and I to be more efficient in our work.

These are the questions I asked them:

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If you work online, or even if your business has a significant online presence, chances are you spend a lot of time looking at your statistics:

• How much traffic did we get?
• How much money did we make?
• How many new sign ups to the newsletter?
• How many new Facebook likes?
• How are we doing in search?
• Where is our web traffic coming from?

The wealth of data you can get about your business these days is amazing.

But it’s also a pain!  read more »

One of the hardest things in using social media as a marketing tool is to understand the behaviour of the people who are fans or friends of your brand online.

I like this infographic, because it helps you to do just that, and also gives you a way to start to identify and segment those people.

Via: Vocus

Recognise some of those?

Which one are you?