I usually write about online marketing on this blog, but for a change I thought I’d address some of the wider issues of marketing as a whole.

In this two-part blog series, I’m going to discuss 10 classic marketing mistakes often made by small businesses.

1.     An untargeted approach

One of the biggest marketing mistakes is not really knowing who you’re trying to sell to. Too many businesses get wrapped up in the details of their product or service and do not spend enough time defining which group of prospective customers is likely to want to buy them.

Unless you have a marketing budget the size of Coca Cola’s, you will not be able to sell your products and services to everyone. Much better to choose a niche market that has the desire and the budget for what you’re offering.

2.     Relying on advertising

Advertising is expensive and usually ineffective unless you’re sustaining a high profile campaign where your brand will receive repeated exposure. There are other ways of gaining the exposure without spending money on expensive TV or print ads. PR, for example, is a way of generating free editorial about your business: in order to generate it, you need to become the first source of information about your industry. Run workshops, seminars and webinars in your area of expertise, and provide the press with free advice articles for them to publish in your name. And, of course, update your blog with quality content to demonstrate your industry knowledge.

3.     Relentlessly pursuing the hard sell

Nothing will alienate prospects faster than the hard sell. Building relationships is what will generate clients for your business. Nobody likes being sold to and your prospects will simply switch off when you start broadcasting to them. Instead, offer them the benefit of your expertise, and sell to them by helping them rather than by advertising to them.

4.     Poor communication

If a prospect has taken the trouble to contact you with an enquiry about your service, respond promptly and professionally. Don’t be hard to get hold of – this will come across as arrogant. If you can’t be in the office to answer every phone call, hire a VA or an answering service – it’s worth every penny.

When you send emails to prospects, make sure they’re personalised and addressed directly to the recipient – and again, make sure you contact them promptly. Sounds obvious, I know, but I’ve been addressed as “Hi there” in emails that have arrived two weeks after I’ve made an enquiry with a potential supplier, and trust me, it’s less than impressive.

5.     Not gaining the prospect’s trust

People like to ‘try before they buy’ – especially if they don’t know you and don’t have any reason to trust you. This is easy when you sell products in a shop, but can be more difficult when you sell a service. Think about what you can offer in lieu of a physical demonstration, such as a free consultation, a free e-book, or a free ticket to an event you’re running. Note the word ‘free’: it’s very important! For example, we offer free blog writing and SEO copywriting samples so that prospects can see the quality of our work for themselves.

When addressing specialist subjects, many business writers can slip into the jargon of their trade. Where the target audience is known to be of like-minded professionals, this approach is often expected, lest you appear to be underestimating your readers’ intelligence. However, where a document is designed for more general consumption, it is important that it be accessible to all.

The one big faux-pas in article writing is abbreviations, well recognised within a certain field but unknown, or in alternative usage, in the wider world. Full descriptions should be used wherever possible. If this proves difficult due to word count, it is perfectly acceptable to ‘introduce’ an abbreviation at the first use of the phrase; ‘sites looking to achieve Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)’. Hereafter, you can use SEO as shorthand. When forming this introduction, it is crucial to use capital letters on each part of the phrase and bracket out the abbreviation, also in capitals, for clarity.

Another alternative, if using a phrase sparsely, is to provide a short definition on the first usage; ‘the process of search engine optimisation, improving a site’s ranking in search engine result, begins…’.

Implementing these simple rules will ensure your articles are accessible and easily understood by more potential clients.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

If you’re looking to get your site picked up by the major search engines, then your copy needs to help attract their attention. The process of creating your content with the search engines in mind is called SEO copywriting.

The easiest place to start is with the title of your page or article. Search engines will initially look here, as this is the quickest and easiest way to judge content. Therefore, you need to know your target keywords and ensure these are incorporated.

As with most elements of web copy, conciseness is a virtue. The perfect title is 72 characters or less as this length enables search engines to display its entirety in their results, encouraging potential clients to click through.

Search engines are also very friendly towards unique content which is frequently updated. This means you shouldn’t duplicate your SEO copywriting across pages and create a regular update scheme for your site, such as a blog. Size also matters. Search engines are more likely to find individual pages if the copy is a substantial length – try to ensure all your pages have at least 200 words of text.

Throughout your content, it helps to have your keyword repeated a limited number of times. However, search engines also look at the number of times you’ve used your keywords in your SEO copywriting. While keyword density is a hotly debated topic, you should steer clear of excessive repetition. The search engines are wise to it, and it’s off-putting for readers too.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

Blogging is not a formal writing style and as such you don’t always need to adhere to the strictest grammatical or structural forms. Here are our top three rules that you can bend – and one that you shouldn’t.

The rules you can bend

Splitting infinitives: Once of the most notorious TV catchphrases in history is Star Trek’s ‘To boldly go’, the bane of grammar pedants for decades. The entire show is about space exploration and the key word is ‘go’. To hide this mid-catchphrase in ‘to go boldly’ would diminish the entire phrase’s power. It can have a similar effect within your blog.

The one-sentence paragraph: When setting out the structure for your business blog, the general consensus is to cover one key point in each paragraph. The exception to this comes in one-sentence paragraphs which add nothing new to your structure, but emphasise what has gone before.

And that’s a fact!

Beginning a sentence with conjunctions: This is largely frowned upon in formal writing and many people hold it is downright wrong. However, as you may have noticed from the sentence above, it is fine in more conversational forms to avoid overlong sentences and add emphasis. Business blog writers often use this technique as a way of making the content more informal and interactive than other kinds of web content.

The rule you should keep

Here is your unbreakable law for business blog writing.

Apostrophes: An apostrophe can take the place of missing letters – as in don’t for do not – or indicate a possessive proper noun, such as ‘this is Julie’s scarf’. Only use the apostrophe in one of these two situations.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.