That’s the findings of recent research by OnePoll, on behalf of BaseKit .  It also found that SMEs in the UK are actually harming their business by not optimising their web presence – 70 per cent of people claim they would not buy from a company with a badly designed website.

The creation of the World Wide Web has made the concept of a global village a reality in just a few years.  Giving businesses direct, fast and economical access to large international markets, it has become a crucial marketing tool for every organisation.  From just 1.3m hosts on the internet in 1993, it has grown to 9.5m in 1996 and there were 234m websites as of Dec 2009.

Today, almost every business has a website, but the question is whether they are all making the most of it.  Like all marketing tools, a website must be constantly reviewed and updated to ensure it evolves to meet customers’ changing needs as well as keeping up with the latest technology.  Not only must it be well-presented and professional to give credibility, it must also be user-friendly and functional to convert all of those online browsers into customers.

Claire stressed the necessity of making self-promotion a priority.  With many professionals working 40 hour weeks, she said it was easy to lose perspective, but essential that everyone invests time in their personal development.  She described how after leaving The Apprentice in 2008, she treated herself ‘like a bottle of shampoo’ and created her own brand using her experience working in beauty marketing with L’Oreal and then Colgate.  With a huge number of opportunities in front of her, she took a step back and drew up a ‘wish list’ of what she wanted to achieve and where she wanted to be.  Since then, she has only accepted work that will further her specific goals.

Clare realised that her passion lay in education and working with young people.  She is currently  involved with two ventures, School Speakers which provides motivational speakers for schools, and Girls Out Loud, which is a social enterprise aiming to raise the aspirations of teenage girls.

Self-promotion takes a lot of effort; and the starting point is a focussed approach to your objectives.  Claire is adamant that everyone should have a written wish list clearly identifying what they want and where they want to be in ten years’ time – currently aged 32, her aim is to be in politics by the time she is 40.  Successful people are passionate and have conviction, so it is essential that you believe in what you do.

Referring back to her time at L’Oreal, Claire said that despite her post-Apprentice image as a chatterbox, she used to be very quiet, but was advised that she had to speak up or she would be ignored.  She then threw herself into creating her ‘Rottweiler’ image – attending every corporate event she could to meet as many people as she could within the business.

Claire asked everyone in the room to write down their USP – a phrase by which they would like to be remembered by people.  She then challenged the audience to convey those characteristics, whether they be ‘driven’, ‘tenacious’, ‘confident’ or whatever, in every aspect of their life.  Having decided on a ‘brand’, the next step is to make short term aims which will lead to the realisation of the long term goal.

To summarise: write a wish list; identify your USP; and live it.  But don’t forget to take time out of your week to dedicate to yourself!

We’re often asked by clients what subjects they should blog about.  While the main objective is, of course, to get your message across, a key factor in choice of topic should also be whether customers are likely to be searching for these keywords.  Like websites, blogs are indexed, categorised and ranked, and offer a great opportunity to boost your SEO rankings.

So, apart from keeping your finger on the pulse and being aware of the current trends in your particular industry (the trade media is a good source of ideas for hot issues), also make the most of Google analytics which will show you which of your blogs have been the most read and which terms readers are using to search.  For example, a recent blog about the use of competitions to drive traffic to websites was one of Appeal’s most read blogs last month.

There is no quick fix to establishing a successful blog and benefitting from the associated SEO advantages.  It’s a question of working hard and working smart.  Effective blogging requires an ongoing commitment to posting regularly and consistently on topic.  This will enable you to build up a substantial bank of blogs and increase your chance of attracting good web traffic through long tail keywords (these are the less predictable, unique search terms; and basically the more content on your blog, the greater the likelihood of hitting them).

One of our competitors recently took the concept of ‘working smart’ a stage further and took advantage of Appeal PR’s high search ranking by linking to an article on social media in Insider and tagging the names of all of the PR consultancies mentioned within it!  Clever, ballsy or unethical?  To me, integrity is a vital part of doing business and the same principles of professionalism should be applied whatever the task.  Social media and blogging are based on the principles of transparency and reciprocity rather than using someone else’s success for quick personal gain, but then again, maybe we should be flattered…

We operate PR accounts for around 15 clients, some large some not so large, some really tiny! With a range of media targets from national news titles, through all the regional and local papers to the thousands of trade media periodicals it can be just as difficult tracking coverage we get as it was securing it in the first place.

Some clients opt for the full media monitoring service from a specialist cuttings agency – a retainer fee each month (typically £60 – £100 for consumer and a similar fee for trade media) and then an individual cutting fee (around £1.80 per cutting or online article).

These ‘Rolls Royce’ services are worthwhile to some clients, and Cision, Durrants and Press Index are among the best available if you are in the market.

However the bills can run into many hundreds of pounds each month, and with recent advances in technology there are alternatives that can be up to 90 per cent as effective.

The first option is one that most people are already aware of, Google News alerts. To set one up,  simply type your desired keywords (such as the company name) into Google, click the ‘News’ tab at the top and search.  At the bottom of the page you will see an option to create an alert.  These are free and can be really very useful for monitoring online news coverage and web mentions, but they are not by any means comprehensive, especially at covering articles in subscription only websites.

The more recent entrant ‘PickaNews’, is a free (for how long, we don’t know) and is a true media monitoring service that allows similar alerts and searches, but instead of simply scouring the web, it also shows print articles that are scanned and you even get a visual of the article on the page.

Setting up alerts is just as simple as with Google.  Go to  PickaNews and type your desired search term.  You even get to tick options for print, online or broadcast media – amazing!

After a search, you can set up an alert, just confirm the email and frequency, and Bob’s your uncle.  Now we haven’t worked out how they can do this for free.  It started in France and has been here for around nine months, and we love it at Appeal.

Have a look, make the most of it and don’t rule out using it if they raise a paywall later.  It is a great and useful service, and if, in time, they have to charge a small fee to keep it running, I don’t mind paying my share.  It’s a valuable business tool, and it deserves to succeed.

Neil discussed some of the questions posed by many companies as they are faced with the apparently diametrically opposed goals of using marketing to sell more while promoting sustainability in order to consume less.  Using retail marketing as an example, he looked at the extent to which marketing academics and practitioners have adopted sustainability.  While the phrase ‘sustainability’ is new and is not covered by the classic marketing texts, the idea of societal marketing, with business seeking positive benefits for the wider community, is not.  Dating back to the 1840s, the Co-operative movement embraced this approach and has flourished, becoming one of the UK’s leading supermarkets with many of its competitors following suit and espousing green credentials.

Despite 35 years of extensive studies and academic debate on the efficacy of societal marketing, many experts are concerned that the social, ethical and environmental issues have not been addressed and, if anything, have deteriorated.  Neil advocates ‘sustainable marketing’ which holds that marketing decisions should be ethical and guided by sustainable business practices which ultimately are the only way to resolve the tensions between consumers’ wants and long term interests, companies’ requirements, society’s long run interests and the need for environmental balance.

Greenwash

Although general awareness of the concept has increased, so has cynicism both by companies and consumers.  Credibility is essential – companies must test market their CSR policies and re-position themselves to ensure that their stakeholders, particularly customers, believe in their green credentials. 

Neil believes that organisations with strong ethical commitments have a real commercial advantage, historically outperforming traditional companies who see profit as their only goal – consumers are drawn to green, ethical and societal responsibility, so companies demonstrating these beliefs will win more market share in the long term.  They are also proving particularly attractive to younger people who are actively seeking employment within organisations which behave responsibly.

Market research has shown that an effective and comprehensive CSR programme gives a number of benefits with 87 per cent of respondents believing it is good for the bottom line; 85 per cent agreeing that it generates a sense of employee pride and engagement; 84 per cent seeing increased customer loyalty; and 80 per cent believing it attracts new customers (Sirota survey 2007).

To summarise, Neil believes that there is a shift in customers’ perception of the retailer’s sustainable position and to avoid alienating customers, organisations must align themselves with what the market wants.  What’s more, consumers are likely to be nudged further in this direction by the activities of pressure groups- a staggering five million people in the UK are members of the 13 largest green groups.  While there are barriers to sustainability, this is a trend that cannot be ignored as it continues to gather momentum and competitors adopt a responsible approach – can your business afford not to seriously consider sustainability?

Take our client, TheFashionPixie.com, a website which compiles high street and online sales and deals.  Each month they launch a new competition offering users the chance to enter a free prize draw, (prizes have included high value designer products such as a Marc Jacobs handbag), simply by registering their details.

Running competitions can bring a number of benefits.  The key one for TheFashionPixie.com was to drive registrations and it has proved to be an effective tool for doing this. With each competition, we see a sizable jump in visitors.

If you are thinking of running a competition, but you’re not sure where to start, here are a few tips we’ve picked up along the way:

-          It sounds like a simple point, but it is essential to make sure your prize is a desirable item for your website’s target market. Otherwise you risk gathering large amounts of email addresses that will be of little value if nobody on that list is actually interested in your site.

-          There are a number of dedicated competition listing sites and forums that will send high volumes of entrants to your site and are free to submit your competition details. Here are some of the sites we use:

http://www.ukcompetitions.com , http://www.competitorscompanion.com  , http://www.loquax.co.uk , http://www.competitionslist.com, http://www.competitionstoday.co.uk/ , http://www.offeroasis.co.uk , http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72

-          Make sure you include accessible terms and conditions. It is very important that a competition is deemed fair by the players and many competition listing sites will not post your details without them.

-          And finally, once you have attracted a participant to your website, keep it simple. The more you require your audience to do, the less likely they are to enter.

Take our client, Stockley’s Sweets. Last week, they moved to a larger factory, investing £200,000 into a new home which makes, amongst others, thousands of rhubarb and custards, fudges, sherbet lemons and humbugs a day. It was a nice local business story that did deserve some column inches, but it was the photo that really gave the piece that extra boost.

A quick, creative, sweet-filled shot taken inside the factory was all it took to pin down a hugely successful response from the media. The article reached a broad audience geographically, appearing in the Yorkshire Post, the Yorkshire Evening Post, TheBusinessDesk.com both in the North West and Yorkshire, the Lancashire Telegraph, Burnley Citizen and Yorkshire Business Insider. It’s also due to appear in The Grocer and Food Manufacture, both key trade titles for the client.

For a little investment, quality photography really pays.

Now it isn’t unusual for TheHuffingtonPost  and celebrity blogs to break some of the world’s biggest media stories, but does that mean they are at all useful tools for every business?

Nowadays we get asked the question on a monthly basis: “Should our company have a blog?”

The answer is often yes, but not always, and we run through a few questions before we advise either way:

1. Do you want to attract more relevant traffic to your website?
2. Are you willing to give away a few ‘tricks of the trade’ in exchange for this traffic?
3. Do you have expertise in your firm that can say interesting useful things on a blog?
4. Will your organisation have the resource to update a blog regularly?

If the answers to the above are all yes, then your organisation might well benefit from using a blog to broaden your profile as experts in your chosen field and markets.

In terms of building a blog, there are many suppliers springing up, and, just like web design, there are many pitfalls and a huge list of dos and don’ts.  Here are a few basic tips to remember;

1. Use WordPress freeware to build the blog – it is the most effective way of attracting Google traffic at present (make sure you include an ‘About us’ page, readers will want to know who you are; and add links to other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn)
2. Use an expert to build it – we outsource to one of a few suppliers, they typically charge £600 to £800 to build a good blog that mirrors the style of the rest of the site
3. Keep the blog within your URL if possible – i.e. use a page within your site – www.yourcompany/blog
4. Study blogs that perform well within your sphere of work, and think carefully about how the bloggers on these structure their posts – learn from good practise!  The Top 50 Business Blogs as identified by The Sunday Times is a good place to start researching -
5. Ensure your posts are informal and informative – don’t get carried away with opinion unless it is really very interesting
6. Never rip off other people’s content or images – its bad manners and also breaches copyright
7. Think carefully about keywords and make the content relevant to potential customer searches (search engines such as Google love websites with blogs because they contain regularly updated keyword-rich content – implementing an effective blog is a great way of pushing up your Google ranking)
8. Include links to interesting content elsewhere and to websites that allow further research on the subject – be altruistic!
9. Offer the reader something they wouldn’t get elsewhere – information, hints, tips and free advice that they would often have to pay for
10. Blog about a broad range of subjects and companies, not just about yourself

Blogging is not the same as any other form of writing, it is more personal and informal, and the best blogs have links and images embedded that enhance the search relevance of the article.  It is impossible to impart every aspect of what works and what doesn’t, but hopefully these are a starting point.   

Our own blog, started in September 2009 delivered a 70 per cent increase in relevant traffic to our website within a year, and has delivered a number of very high quality business leads – proof positive that a good blog is good business.

A few months on and it has found a new place in my daily routine of browsing, but I keep getting asked the question ‘Why would I want one?’ by people who I talk to about the device, and thought I would explain the way it has crept into my daily life.

Firstly, I have to say that I bought it with the excuse of needing to keep ahead of media trends and the latest platforms for Apps, etc, but I always wanted it for leisure mainly, so didn’t have great expectations for it as a business device.

What I have found though, is that for certain uses, presentations, browsing live websites in meetings, watching video and quick easy handling of email on the move it is just superb.  I was already a convert to the iPhone (it seems that most buyers come through this obvious route )and this follows that device seamlessly but with the obvious benefits of its size.

I have one regular monthly meeting where a finance character thinks we should all print out a 33 page excel spreadsheet every month, kill a tree and then shred the mountain of paper after every meeting.  I now simply keep the required excel and .pdf files on an email in my inbox and access them on my iPad, scrolling rapidly to relevant pages, and with the added benefit of being able to zoom into any line or detail under discussion.

Could I do that on my notebook? Yes, but the battery life is triple (I get 9-12 hours of video playback, or 7 hours of browsing from mine), and the iPad takes just a second or so to launch email, saving all the hassle with my decent but still fiddly Acer notebook.

But it is at home I find that the iPad comes into its own.  Whether you just want to make sure you haven’t missed any crucial out of hours client emails, browse news websites or research anything that you previously did on a laptop then I now reach for the iPad every time .  I saw a phrase that described a trend towards ‘scatter cushion browsing’; using multiple web browsing devices  all around the home, and this is a good way to describe how it works its way into your home.

Right now, it will be on the dining room table where I left it this morning, or my wife might be using it in the kitchen to watch a You Tube demo video on recipes.  It is also often on the coffee table in the living room, and when I find an offer on an email that I want to show my other half, I will take it outside or to wherever she might be.  Its completely unhindered mobility, tactile search and beautiful screen makes it my favourite device for browsing. 

All in all, the reasons I now love the iPad are:

• 10 hour plus battery life feels like it never needs charging
• Lovely graphics make browsing easier, and who needs a keyboard?
• Huge video & music storage is great for journeys
• ‘Always on’ start up makes logging onto emails a really simple and quick task

I think that the FT’s App is a lesson in the way publications can utilise the net in years to come, and tablets, whether Mac (who have sold 3 million units and rising! ) or on any other OS will be in every home within five years, but it is still mainly a leisure device for me, but one I wouldn’t give back if you offered me a great deal of money.

Will the iPad change the world?  No.  Has it made mine better?  Absolutely.

With many clients within the professional services sector, we were pleased to be invited to join the committee of the Yorkshire group of the PM Forum, the association for marketers in professional services.  The seminar I attended this week raised some familiar themes and I was interested to hear how some of the region’s leading legal and accountancy firms were handling them.

It’s not very often that you are able to question the managing partner of a leading regional professional services practice about his marketing strategy, let alone quiz four at the same time!  But this was the opportunity presented by the PM Forum event which took a Question Time style format.  The panel consisted of partners from four well-known organisations in Yorkshire with law firms represented by Paul Ayre of Gordons and Jonathan Oxley of Lee & Priestley; plus Kevin O’Connor of Baker Tilly and Richard Williams of Deloitte providing an accountancy perspective.

Ably chaired by James Buckley of Deloitte in the role of Dimbleby, it was a refreshingly honest session with the partners sharing some of the common challenges and frustrations of marketing within the professional services arena.  They gave an interesting insight into traits they look for when recruiting their marketing team.  Desirable characteristics include resilience; a ‘can-do’ attitude; creativity and enthusiasm.  They agreed that they need people who will champion marketing initiatives and are genuine team players, able to work across specialisms in the firm.  Whilst some of the partners stated that a background in the firm’s profession was very useful, others felt that a fresh approach with a marketer from a different sector could also give significant benefits.

There were a number of recurring themes, perhaps the most significant was the need for the entire organisation to ‘buy in’ to the importance of marketing and business development.  Whilst it might not always be a practical solution to make this element part of an employees’ performance review, one of the partners stressed the importance of a top-down approach saying that because he as managing partner had a weekly meeting with the marketing team, everyone in the firm was aware that business development activities were a priority. 

Making Marketing a Priority

There were comments from the audience that marketing was often seen as a secondary function to client work and also that it was sometimes difficult for marketers to challenge the opinion of partners who were senior to them, but perhaps had a limited understanding of marketing.  There was a consensus that it was the responsibility of the marketer to champion the best strategy for the firm and to find a way around any resistance.  It was also agreed that although every partner had to be a fee-earner, he also had a responsibility to market and promote the firm. 

The importance of cross-selling services within a firm and the role a marketer could play in this process was also stressed.  With the market still tough for winning new business, the opportunity to sell additional services to existing clients presented a much more attractive proposition.  However, with professionals sometimes ‘blinkered’ within their own department, a marketer with a broader perspective could prove invaluable.  It was also felt that those involved in business development must engage with clients.

Interestingly, all of the partners said that their marketing activities had not retracted during the recession with business development acknowledged as a crucial part of the management process.  In some cases, marketing activities had grown although resource had been re-focussed on sales generation.  As with marketing in any sector, the key is to ensure that every initiative has clear and measurable objectives.