Content marketing is creating articles, blogs, white papers, videos, photos, images etc which contains information that’s valuable to consumers. If your content contains relevant keywords they’ll be indexed by popular search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Combined with a well planned online marketing strategy it enables people and businesses to be discovered and build a credible online profile. It also results in more inbound traffic to your landing pages so you can better test and measure your website goals.
Content marketing is also aimed at making your site more sticky – ie. customers stay there longer and even follow links to your other content
We use Mailchimp for our email marketing and I had to sit down and have a cup of tea after looking at our recent payment! There was no shock increase in costs or monthly fees and in fact everything is working perfectly but I realised how much money MailChimp make as our customer and prospect list grows in size.
Could you imagine paying extra for Xero or MYOB software just because the number of transactions increased? And I don’t mean a couple dollars extra, I mean double the monthly fee!
I also noticed that MailChimp is now already integrated into the QuickBooks Online software for all businesses to access. Here’s what it looks like.
I had a fantastic conversation with an EzyLearn student during the week. She enrolled into our Xero COMPLETE Training Course Package and love it so much she enrolled into MYOB, QuickBooks, Excel and more.
The course increased her confidence to apply for and get work after years of being out of the workforce and as a bookkeeper she now uses the courses as a resource for aspects of the software she needs to upskill on. The EzyLearn Affiliate Membership is designed for students like her.
I hope I didn’t sound rude, but if you’ve read these blog posts you’d know I love playing around with new technology but Telstra Online Essentials is a website builder tool that infuriates me!
I recently had an opportunity to help out Neville with his online marketing and that included exploring his current website on Telstra Online Essentials. We quickly got the EPP code for his domain name and transferred AWAY to Crazy Domains but they had some issues too!
The cost of paying for somebody to click your ad on Google can be anywhere from $1 to $10: that’s for just a click! So what does it end up costing to get somebody to call you or email you? This is a big dilemma for many small business owners looking for new clients. In fact, sometimes it might seem easier to just send a good, old-fashioned letter!
The great thing about WordPress is that you can set up as many user profiles as you want and give your staff the access level they need to create and edit blogs.
They can’t really stuff it up because there’s an audit trail of changes and only someone with publishing rights can make the changes live (such as a WordPress administrator).
You could of course outsource your blog writing to someone on Upwork, Freelancer, or Airtasker, but that has it’s own set of challenges
While I was getting my hair cut the other day, I casually asked the hairdresser how her business was doing. Now this woman is a highly experienced and personable stylist who runs a modern and professional-looking salon with terrific co-workers.
Yet she lamented the fact that business was quiet and she was struggling to get new clients.
When I started my first business in Sydney’s Dee Why in the early 1990’s, I was amazed that most restaurants and cafes, as well as other retail shops like dress shops, didn’t even know who their customers were!
Many business owners knew their customers by face, but they missed out on lots of opportunities to market and make contact with these customers when business was slow or they were overstocked. Are you working your database?
But what’s the point of that? The last thing you want to do in a busy, information-saturated world is waste people’s time. It’s an insult and you’ll put them off.
After all, these people have given up time in their busy days to read what you have to say. Don’t ruin this special relationship forever by churning out rushed, poor quality content or waffle.
MANY YEARS AGO I spent $100,000 in advertising in one year. But I didn’t make truckloads of money and became utterly exhausted with the sales process. Yet I still see companies using this approach today: Selling short courses for over-inflated prices to recoup the money they spend on advertising.
When I spent that exorbitant chunk of money on advertising, I then had to hire more people to sell the courses. I had to train these people about what was in the courses, and train the trainers and, well to cut a long story short, spend so much more on resources and overheads that I didn’t make a huge sum of money out of the whole venture at all.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HE INTERNET HAS democratised many elements of starting your own small business, but, in particular, it has made marketing a small business a whole lot easier.
Another super easy thing to vastly help your business along is getting your own “branded email address”. What do we mean by a branded email address? Simply an email address that carries your branding in the domain name, for example: info@thenameofyourbusiness.com.au versus the far less professional: yourbusinessname@gmail.com.
THERE IS A FAIRLY SIGNIFICANT gender imbalance for executive positions in the corporate world. Sure, there are notable exceptions, but men in managerial positions in the workplace still outnumber women two-to-one.
But when you look at some industries, like Bookkeeping, the numbers are massively swayed towards the female gender and one of the reasons is it can be the perfect business to run from home.
Still unsure whether you can trust online ratings and reviews?
After a tradesperson? Sometimes asking a business person from a related business, such as a real estate agent, can be a good source for a recommendation.
In our recent post about recommendations we suggested that you ask a friend, relative or colleague if they’ve ever had experience with a business you’re thinking of using — chances are, if your friends live locally they may well have; or if the business is a chain or franchise operating over a wide area.
Also ask other businesses
When seeking a professional recommendation you can also ask other businesses. Find out what their experiences have been, if any. Often businesses will have a relationship with each other even if it is not, at first, apparent.
For instance, a symbiotic relationship tends to exist between real estate agents and tradespeople. Agents will regularly draw up a list of preferred tradespeople that they work with and recommend to their tenants, landlords and vendors.
And there are plenty of tradespeople who do the same for real estate agents that they’ve had professional dealings with. There are plenty of other examples of these sorts of professional recommendations.
Beware professional bias
Of course, just as you should be wary of overly positive or negative ratings and reviews online, you should be likewise when soliciting professional reviews. If one business regularly referred work by another, even if they don’t think they’re a great business to deal with, neither party will necessarily say anything bad about each other.
In the end, when looking for a tradesperson, real estate agent or some other professional service, be sure to do all your research. Ask around for personal referrals, check them up online, and get in touch with each business directly to see which one is the best fit for you.
Real people, real locations
At EzyLearn we provide testimonials from our students, which include their full name and location, and why they chose EzyLearn to study in the first place. We also offer a money-back guarantee and free samples of our course content, so students know they can trust they’re making the right choice. Visit our website for more information and to see our wide range of courses.
And while it’s a great expense app for professional services businesses or tradespeople, Expensify is also great for retail and online shops or hospitality businesses.
Take a photo of bills and invoices from suppliers and upload them to Expensify, which will input all of the data and then send it through to Xero.
Create expense reports
Online and offline retailers don’t have to worry about this too much unless they also produce their own products, but for cafes and restaurants that host functions or cater for events, separating the expenses directly related to those functions and events is an important way to track their profitability.
Automatic approvals cut bookkeeping time
By turning on the automatic approvals feature and setting expense rules, you can cut your bookkeeping time by having recurring or trivial expenses automatically approved and sent to Xero, so you can spend more time on the complicated ones that require closer inspection.
By keeping an eagle eye on your expenses using Xero and Expensify you’ll be able to see precisely where your business is most profitable and where it’s not so you can modify it accordingly.
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Our Xero training courses will show you have to track expenses in Xero and how to connect third party apps to your Xero account. We offer ALL SKILLS LEVELS for ONE LOW PRICE. Find out more.
Are you in business as a bookkeeper, tradesperson, retailer, trainer or real estate agent and want to stand out from the crowd? We can teach you the online marketing techniques to help you do just this! Check out what’s included in our comprehensive Social Media and Digital Marketing online training courses.
Is your business suited to clients making online bookings? We have an online course that will teach you how to make the most of Google G-Suite and Google Calendar.
JUST AS YOU CAN USE Google Calendar to create a staff roster, you can also set up and create Google Calendar appointment slots. This is a fabulous way for businesses like hair and beauty salons to let their clients make appointments online.
To enable your clients to schedule appointments using Google Calendar, you’ll need to have a G Suite account for work (or school). G Suite accounts can be a little tricky to set up, but we have courses to show you how, and the beauty is, they come with a boatload of useful tools for small businesses — such as Google Sheets, Docs and Forms.
Create appointment types as staff
Before clients can book appointment times, you’ll need to set up the appointment types. For hair and beauty salons, you may consider setting your staff as the appointment types or the types of appointments you offer — cut and blow dry, foils, etc — so clients can pick the staff member or the appointment type they’d like to make an appointment with.
Create booking button
Use the link Google provides for your appointment page to create an ‘online booking’ button in Facebook or in WordPress, so client can easily access your online booking system from your Facebook page and website.
Move all bookings online
Online bookings won’t eradicate the need to take phone bookings, so it’s really important that you move your entire booking system online.
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Our Google training courses show you how to setup your G Suite account, share calendars and more. Once you’ve setup your G Suite account, you’ll be able to create Appointment Slots and share your appointments page with clients. Visit our website for more information.
Are you in business as a bookkeeper, tradesperson, retailer, trainer or real estate agent and want to stand out from the crowd? We can teach you the online marketing techniques to help you do just this! Check out what’s included in our comprehensive Social Media and Digital Marketing online training courses. Find out more about the secrets behind LinkedIn and how you can find more work and more clients.
Facebook can be extremely useful for marketing to a local audience.
In its decade of existence, Facebook has built up a wealth of data about its users, data that it likes to sell back to those who need it, in the form of targeted advertising. Facebook advertising, though similar in its approach, is very different to Google Ads in what it delivers.
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Xero is a great bookkeeping program for tradies who are on the go and using their phones (or a tablet) all the time. From receipts scanning to creating quotes and invoices, receiving payments and keeping track of project costs.
bookkeepercourse.com.au/produ…
