There are only 3 ways to grow your business

• 1.       Increase your customer base
• 2.       Increase the value of each transaction
• 3.       Increase the frequency with which your customers buy from you

Most businesses think that doubling your turnover means having to double your customer numbers, but if you take each one of the 3 ways above, and start to apply some numbers; you get very interesting results.

What these results mean is that you can concentrate on smaller targets in each of the areas above, or even use a phased approach, improving one area after the other, to increase your turnover much more than you thought easily possible.

Let’s take a hypothetical business.  So you have a business, and in that business, let’s say you have 500 customers, and each of those customers spends an average of £10 per transaction and they buy from you at a frequency of let’s say 10 times a year, or week, or 2 years. The time frame really doesn’t matter.

500 x £10 x 10 = £50,000.

Let’s see what happens if we increase our customer base by just 10%, the value of each transaction by just 10% and the frequency by which those people buy, by just 10%.

550 x £11 x 11 = £66,550

That’s an increase of 33.1% and all you have done is make small improvements in the three main areas of growing your business

Here is one EASY way to ‘Increase the frequency with which your customers buy from you’, and one EASY way to ‘Increase the value of each transaction’

1.       Call your 10 best customers

Pick up the phone and call 10, or 20 or more of your best customers (or prospects if you haven’t got that many customers yet); and simply ask them WHAT THEY NEED. Just chat, don’t sell, just ask questions. You will probably make some more immediate sales, but from the answers you get, you may get some great clues as to how to expand your product and services base. Then when you’ve found out how to source the product or service; you have a willing qualified lead ready to make a purchase. Many businesses will have a customer base in which maybe only 20% of that customer base provides 80% of the income. Don’t neglect these customers. Go out and meet them, and do the same, just ask questions, find out what they want. Most businesses will neglect these customers or not give them the attention they deserve, but it doesn’t cost anything except TIME to move your focus to maintaining and building these relationships. It may not seem like marketing, but marketing is not ALL about getting new customers; it’s about keeping the relationship with your existing customers so that they return to you to buy every time.

2.UPSELL

This means selling something else to customers at the moment that they buy from you. You’ve probably experienced this if you’ve ever been asked to ‘go large’ at a fast food outlet, or in the convenience store where items are labeled ‘Three for the price of two’. Those are both examples of upsell. The reason why a business or a retailer will try to ‘increase the value of your transaction’ by ‘upselling’, is that they realize that it may have cost them quite a lot to get you to the point of buying, and at that point of purchase, it will cost them NOTHING to try to sell you something else. This is known as a ‘pure profit sale’; because the costs are borne by the first sale, the upsell is ‘pure profit’. If just 20% of your customers allow you to upsell, that’s an additional pot of cash that you have brought into the business for absolutely NO MARKETING COST.

So what in your business, at the point of selling; could you also offer as additional real value to that customer? If the answer is nothing, you might want to create something that would add value to a sale, or team up with someone who does have something, and then take a percentage by prior agreement. You could create levels of products whereby someone who wants a service or product is upsold the ‘gold’ version which has more value.

Here are some examples of upsell in various markets

·         suggesting a premium brand of alcohol when a brand is not specified by a customer (such as if a customer simply requests a "rum and coke").

·         selling an extended service contract for an appliance

·         suggesting a customer purchase more RAM or a larger hard drive when servicing his or her computer

·         selling luxury finishing on a vehicle

·         suggesting a brand of watch that the customer hasn't previously heard of as an alternative to the one being considered.

·         suggesting a customer purchase a more extensive car wash package.

·         Asking the customer to supersize a meal at a fast food restaurant.

5 Easy Ways to Upsell Your Products and Services

1) If you sell products, put an ad or coupon for a related product or an upgrade in the box.
2) Send new clients a thank you card with a promotion for one of your other services.
3) Put a sign up in your shop or office announcing a new offering or special deal. Just make sure it doesn’t get lost in the clutter, and train your staff to point it out.
4) Send targeted follow-up emails to customers offering them a related product or service (you can do this automatically with a good email autoresponder , we’ll cover this another time)).
5) On your Website, offer an added discount for buying two products or services together.  Amazon does a great job of this by always offering a second book on the same subject below your main selection.

Remember, upselling is really just a matter of offering something else your customer is likely to want, based on what they’re buying now. Simple as that. 

You’re doing your clients and customers a HUGE disservice if you don’t tell them you have something else they may want or need. And you’re leaving money on the table in your own business.


HW Marketing UK are the Affordable Website Design Company of choice for Small or Startup Businesses in the area. Easily understandable pricing packages start at £250. 

How To Find Out Who Links To Your Website

I can’t stress how important links from other relevant websites are to your website’s standing with Google.

Every link  from another website (or any web presence for that matter, Facebook, Twitter You Tube etc etc; but that’s another kettle of fish, let’s stay with websites) is seen as an independent ‘vote’ for your website.

The more votes you get, the more Google likes you. Simple. Not quite. Google also cares where these ‘votes’ are coming from. If you have a friend that is a Plumber and you link to him from your High End Audio Visual Retailers; Google is not stupid, and it’s not only going to ignore it as irrelevant; BUT, it may even knock a teensy weensy bit off your ranking.

Also, don’t use Automatic Link Building Farms. Google knows if you have used one. They can smell it a mile off; and they will DEFINITELY mark you down for that one. If it was that easy, we’d all have pages and pages of website links and no useful information or content; and it’s the sites with useful information and content AND ‘votes’ for that information and content that gets Google excited.

So how many links from other websites do you have ?

To find out go to www.google.co.uk to get Google’s Homepage.

In the search bar type

Links:{your site}

So for example for my own HW Marketing site, I would type

Links:www.hwmarketing.co.uk

Don’t forget the colon after ‘links’.

If the site has any links at all, you will get results that display each of the site pages that link to you.

If your results return something similar, then you can see immediately what sites, and how many, link to your site.

If you have very few links, then look out for next weeks blog which will show you how to get a whole bunch of relevant votes for your website and nudge you ahead of the competition.

Here is one HOT tip on linking that can put you just that little bit further ahead.

You see, although Google likes links to your site it’s not all that keen, well I say not all that keen; consensus is that you get a lower score, marginally for Reciprocal links. What I mean by that is that for example is that if you have a website that is say a Hairdressers and your business friend the Tanning Booth Shop links to your site; from what I’ve said, that’s a good relevant vote for your site, but the catch is that your friend is going to want you to link back in return. Ok . Now you’ve both got relevant votes from each other. That’s a good thing right? I just said so earlier on.  Yes it is. But Google knows that it is likely this is an arranged ‘vote’ and marks it ever so ever so slightly lower than if the link is not reciprocated. That’s because it knows that the vote is likely not an ‘independent vote’.

To swing the ever so ever so slight marking the other way you could set up an incoming link  arrangement. This requires at least three participants.

Your hairdresser links to the tanning booth, the tanning booth to a local nail parlour, the nail parlour to the café next door, the café next door to a fashion boutique and they to you.

No reciprocal links, everybody has an independent vote, and there’s a basis for relevance all the way through.


HW Marketing UK are the Affordable Website Design Company of choice for Small or Startup Businesses in the area. Easily understandable pricing packages start at £250. 

Find Out If Your Site Exists

This chap is a ‘Googlebot’. At the moment, he really does control Earth. That’s because Google is by far the most widely used search engine at this point in time, and unless something drastic happens, will be for the foreseeable future. Google’s market share in the UK is 90.68% (Measured Jan 2011)

Have you ever wondered how Google knows which websites to place on Page 1 above all others, based just on one search phrase of just one word? How does that happen? How do they know what are the most relevant sites? And how do they deliver the search result pages (SeRPs) so quickly given that there must be billions of sites to look at ?

Quite simply, googlebots  crawl the web. Constantly. They crawl all over the pages of every website, looking at the wording, the description of the pictures, keywords, and a hundred other things. Then they ‘index’ you under a suitable relevant category (e.g. (We, Google, have decided that Bob is a) decorator, interior, blackpool, speciality restaurants, hotels ).

Then,  when a search is initiated, the search engine only has to look at the ‘relatively few’ sites that meet the search criteria. Sometimes ‘relatively few’ can mean over a million or just a few hundred; but that’s basically how Google can access results quickly.

There are literally millions of sites being created daily, so it may be quite some time, perhaps months, before a new site gets crawled and indexed. Some may not get crawled at all (eventually they all will, but I do mean EVENTUALLY). The top and bottom of this, is that if your site hasn’t yet been indexed by Google; your site will not be considered for display on results pages. Quite simply you don’t exist.

To find out if your site has been indexed, go to www.google.co.uk to get Google’s Homepage.

In the search bar type

Site:{your site}

So for example for my own HW Marketing site, I would type

Site:www.hwmarketing.co.uk

Don’t forget the colon after ‘site’.

If the site has been indexed, you will get results that display each of your site’s pages.

You can see that each of my site’s pages are indexed if you type it in in. If your results return something similar, then your site has been indexed; and that’s the first step on reaching Page 1

However, if your results are blank, then your site hasn’t been indexed and you don’t exist.

To get your site indexed use the link below to SUBMIT your site to Google.

http://www.google.co.uk/addurl

Submitting your site to Google is a request to be crawled and indexed (or re-crawled and re-indexed). It’s the quickest way to get indexed. Your webmaster should have done this as a matter of course, but if you built your own site, you may not have done it yet. You can submit your site more than once. Consensus says only submit once a month otherwise Google may view it as spam and not only ignore the request but mark your site down a notch. Some SEO experts say even once a month is too much. What we all agree on is that a new site MUST be submitted asap.


HW Marketing UK are the Affordable Website Design Company of choice for Small or Startup Businesses in the area. Easily understandable pricing packages start at £250. 

HW Marketing UK - Creating Visibility, Sales and Success: ONE is the worst number in business

HW Marketing UK - Creating Visibility, Sales and Success: ONE is the worst number in business

ONE is the worst number in business

ONE supplier, ONE key employee, ONE key customer, ONE source of leads, and I could go on and on and on....each of these risky scenarios has impending financial disaster written all over them.

I was speaking to a potential client some months ago now, a conservatory manufacturer and installer, and he was advising me to use radio advertising. Now the reason he was advising me to spend thousands on radio advertising is that he said that it was working for his company, and they relied on it. In fact, they relied on it so much, that they had scrapped any other form of advertising and lead generation in favour of it.

Well that’s great if it’s working, and it certainly appeared to be working… “but”, I asked “what if a competitor comes along with a better advert, better radio slot times, more coverage, and offers something you don’t, what have you got in place to fall back on immediately?” He couldn’t answer.

Amazingly, some small businesses rely on one lead source, for example directories like Yellow pages or Thomson Local, and I’m sure many of them are doing great. But this is so dangerous, what happens if next time the directory is printed and there are 3 other businesses doing exactly what you do and their adverts are better than yours, or worse, what if there was a mistake and your number was printed wrong or you were omitted completely?  Your trusted source of leads has now GONE. Put simply, every business should be propped up by multiple sources of ‘Lead Generation’, or ‘Pillars’.

This is known as the ‘Parthenon Plan’. Bear with me ! The Parthenon of Greece was created over 2 millenia ago and was built on more than 60 pillars to withstand unknown challenges. In the late 17^th century, it was used as an ammunition store and suffered a direct hit exploding the munitions inside. However, most of the building and columns are still standing.

It’s about realizing that in order to grow, or even survive, you must use 8, 10 or even more pillars of lead generation so that if one or three start to perform badly, then you still have strong foundations propping up your business.

But isn’t cost restrictive? Most businesses have a marketing budget and it just won’t run to adverts here and there, leaflet drops, internet advertising etc etc ; and anyway what else is there?

Ok here’s a list of what you can employ as lead generation pillars.

• ·         Direct Mail
• ·         Pay Per Click Advertising
• ·         Search Engine Optimisation
• ·         Leaflet Drops
• ·         Telephone Marketing
• ·         Email capture
• ·         Autoresponder
• ·         Direct Sales
• ·         Joint Ventures
• ·         Online Public Relations
• ·         Run Competitions
• ·         Open Days
• ·         Systematic Referrals
• ·         Internet Advertising
• ·         Offline Public Relations
• ·         Shows, Events
• ·         Affiliate Programs
• ·         Networking
• ·         Teleseminar
• ·         Print Advertising
• ·         Radio and TV
• ·         Newsletters
• ·         Sponsorship
• ·         Mini Courses

And on and on and on. I could fill this list with a HUNDRED ideas.

Action Steps –     

1. Make a list of your existing lead generation strategies
2. How much business do you generate as a percentage on each strategy ?

If you have less than 8 strategies (pillars) and any one of them (or two or three) add up to more than 40% to 50%, you don’t have a Parthenon, you have a Leaning Tower of Pisa, and you may have to prop it up.

The ideal spread would be to have 10 strategies, each bringing in 10% of your leads, but any spread is better than relying on one or even two key strategies.


HW Marketing UK are the Affordable Website Design Company of choice for Small or Startup Businesses in the area. Easily understandable pricing packages start at £250. 

Getting a 100% profit increase is easier than you think

There are only 3 ways to grow your business

1.       Increase your customer base

2.       Increase the value of each transaction

3.       Increase the frequency with which your customers buy from you

Most businesses think that doubling your turnover means having to double your customer numbers, but if you take each one of the 3 ways above, and start to apply some numbers; you get very interesting results.

What these results mean is that you can concentrate on smaller targets in each of the areas above, or even use a phased approach, improving one area after the other, to increase your turnover much more than you thought easily possible.

Let’s take a hypothetical business.  So you have a business, and in that business, let’s say you have 500 customers, and each of those customers spends an average of £10 per transaction and they buy from you at a frequency of let’s say 10 times a year, or week, or 2 years. The time frame really doesn’t matter.

500 x £10 x 10 = £50,000.

Let’s see what happens if we increase our customer base by just 10%, the value of each transaction by just 10% and the frequency by which those people buy, by just 10%.

550 x £11 x 11 = £66,550

That’s an increase of 33.1% and all you have done is make small improvements in the three main areas of growing your business

At this stage, don’t worry about how you will be able to make those improvements, stick with me, and I’ll give you everything you need.

How about this;

Again, using our hypothetical business, let’s see what happens if we increase our customer base by 30%, the value of each transaction by just 20% and the frequency by which those people buy, by just 30%. Slightly harder targets, but still very achievable over time. What happens to our numbers then?

650 x £12 x 13 = £101,400

That’s an increase of 102.8%. You will have doubled your turnover.

Now, you might be saying, that’s all very well but my business doesn’t work like that, I’m a roofer, newsagent, computer repair guy whatever, and I just can’t increase the frequency with which people buy, or my business doesn’t have regular customers, and how the hell do I raise my prices, and all this in a double dip scary economy  etc etc ?

I promise you that in the weeks and months to come, I will show you how you can influence these numbers no matter what business you are in.


HW Marketing UK are the Affordable Website Design Company of choice for Small or Startup Businesses in the area. Easily understandable pricing packages start at £250. 

Boy, are your customers selfish !

You may have heard all this before, but understanding how to communicate benefits and how your customer will benefit from what you have to offer, is crucial to your marketing efforts.

When a prospect looks at your web site or any sales literature for that matter, they are tuned firmly into Radio “WII FM”.

That's Radio, "What's In It For Me?”

Your prospect wants to immediately see just what it is you can do for them. Your prospect has a problem that he or she, wants YOU to solve, and they want to know if you can solve it.

Here’s an example of some ‘features’ being advertised in the local press and on the web.

“Our pans are professional grade cast iron”

“I do Home Conveyance”

“24hr Domestic Plumber”

“uPVC Doors”

You can see adverts with lists of features everywhere in the Yellow Pages in any town in the UK.

For example;

Tree Work

·         Hedge Cutting

·         Pruning

·         Stump Removal

·         Felling

None of these adverts stick out and there are pages and pages of them saying exactly the same thing, and it’s a safe bet that the marketing materials of these companies are exactly the same.

It's all too easy for you to reel off a string of features about your products, but your prospect really doesn't care at this point, because they can't see the immediate benefit for them; they want to know what YOU are going to do for THEM.

If you don't tell them straight away, they'll move on and find someone else who will.

So how do you decide on what the benefits of your product features are? Use the ‘Drill Down’ method

Start off with a feature of your company and ask yourself "Why does that matter to me?" If you can keep drilling down and asking "Why does that matter to me?", you haven't yet reached the benefit of that feature.


Interrogate yourself:

1. Name a feature.

2. Then ask yourself, "What's important about that?" Then,

3. "Which means that I get____"

4. "Which means that I no longer have to______"

5. "This means that now I get to______."

Demonstrate to your prospect how your product or service delivers the benefit. Here's an example;

“Our pans are professional grade cast iron” (So why does professional grade cast iron matter to me?)

“No matter how uneven the type of surface on which it is placed, on a stove top, an open grill or over a barbecue, it will cook food evenly. (So why does evenly cooked food matter to me?)

“It prevents burning or sticking without constant attention” (So why does that matter to me?)

“You will produce beautifully cooked mouthwatering food, easily, every time for your family/customers.”

There’s the benefit.

Here’s another example:

“We sell running vests made from cutting edge textile technology materials” (So why should that matter to me?)

“Because the clothes are made of hi tech, soft, breathable fibres” (So why do hi tech, soft, breathable fibres matter to me?)

“Because you can move more freely and comfortably in the clothes, and they wick perspiration away” (So why does that matter to me?)

“You can get more health benefits from your running regime if you have comfortable clothes that enable you to exercise comfortably.”

That's the benefit.

People do not buy on features, they buy benefits.

It’s important that you translate your features to benefits in order to convince your prospective buyer they will benefit from buying from you.

People reach a point when they decide to buy. It’s just a momentary decision, and your task is to get people to the point of making that decision. You must understand that people will not get to that stage until they understand just how they are going to benefit from what it is you are offering them.

You could have the best product or service in the world, but unless you make people understand the benefits to them, they will not reach this decision point.

So here’s an action point for you. Gather up all your marketing materials, leaflets, brochures, website, letters, e-mails, everything; and examine them.

Do they convey benefits or features? If they are feature rich, then use the ‘drill’ down method I described earlier to get at least 3 or 4 of the benefits of doing business with you.

Then TEST your benefits on a small scale within your materials. Don’t immediately change tack with all of your marketing. Test it. So for example if you normally send out 500 leaflets by direct mail, send out 400 of your normal leaflet and 100 of your new ‘benefits rich’ copy; and see what happens.


HW Marketing UK are the Affordable Website Design Company of choice for Small or Startup Businesses in the area. Easily understandable pricing packages start at £250.