Are you based in the Cork area?

Are you worried how the new water charges will affect your business?

If your answer is yes to all those questions, contact me today on 0862263628.

One of our clients installs rainwater harvesting systems  successfully in the Munster area and would like to create a case study for carwash businesses as he feels that his system will benefit your industry and help save money on the new water charges that are being introduced into Ireland.

It can be a forecourt or a carwash only business.

If interested , give me a call today on 0862263628 or email denis@finnmedia.ieand I will arrange a meeting to see if you qualify with my client.

You business will not only benefit with a complete rainwater harvesting system at a special price but get promoted with our case study marketing material.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon,

Warm regards,

Denis Finnegan

Phone: 0862263628

Email: denis@finnmedia.ie

Here’s what I would suggest in five clear points when considering using social media for promoting a project.

1. Know your focus & plan

Social media objectives should always be about focus. You don’t directly sell using social media but with the right message and platforms , you should be able to promote an upcoming project effectively. Determine your target audience, your messages and what you offer to the audience while monitoring which goals are achieved.

2. Know your channels

There is a wide range of social media channels now available on line to promote your message and drive traffic. I have complied a list of some of the main ones.

Slideshare:This online collection of slides is fast becoming one of the best methods of driving traffic to your site. Create simple presentations about your project and use this platform to explain issues that your target audience to searching answers for online.

Facebook: Facebook can be challenging at the beginning but a great way to create interaction between your audience and communicate your message. Use tabs such as competitions to increase your fans, Facebook promotionswhich rewards your fans and survey tabs to ask your audience what they think about your project/services.

Twitter:If you want to communicate in real time and promote your project to opinion leaders, Twitter can’t be ignored. You will have instant access to the media who have embraced this platform as an essential tool for their business and you could generate press coverage if you tweet to the journalists who shares similar interests that your project addresses.

Blogging:This is still one of the best ways to generate traffic as long as quality and honest content is supplied and correctly optimised to appear in the search engines.

Survey Monkey:This might not be a platform but using surveys either with Survey Monkey or Google docs, you can gauge interest and provide valuable information that will help you adapt your message correctly. Surveys is also emerging as a PR tool to generate publicity on radio.

You Tube:Create short videos and upload them to Youtube and Vimeo. How to videos and short funnies seem to get the best hits on these channels.

Others: Digg, LinkedIn, Google + (New business profiles launched this week), Buzz are also ones to consider. See link for other  Social Media platforms.

3. Know who is responsible

For your social media plan to be successful, you need to know who is responsible for creating the content, coding if required, promotion and monitoring the results. This person should also create a list of the key people they need to approach as well as creating email messages , invitations to online events and marketing content which will explain your project to your different target segments.

4. Know when its time

A calendar like Google calendar will help you plan out when to post messages, videos and other content that is timely and that will generate the best response. This calendar should be viewed by the whole team and suggestions can be made to adapt as the plan is implemented.

5. Know to have fun

Social media is all about having fun and sharing content with your friends. Try to focus on the fun elements of the project when using Social Media to promote it and best of luck.

About the author: Denis Finnegan is marketing consultant with Finn Media , the sales focused marketing company.

I came across this great diagram which explains SEO and how its
broken into sections.

Resource: http://searchengineland.com/download/seotable/SearchEngineLand-Periodic-Table-of-SEO.pdf

1.  Create a distinctive and unique brand

Why should customers choose you over your competition? That question should always be in your mind when planning your next move. Think of your brand as your companies personality.

Your brand if developed properly and if truly unique will help differentiate, attract and make the brand familiar with potential customers. It will also set the tone for all future marketing material as well as making it clear for all staff on the direction the company is taking. I chose

“Sales focused marketing” as my main message because that that is my expertise and through my research that is why my customers choose me over my competition.

Once you create your message and objectives for the brand, you should then and only then, start work with a graphic designer on the logo. Once this is all in place you can build your new brand into your marketing plan.

2.  Research your market and your ideal target customer

Before you begin spending money on attracting customers, it is wise to research your market. The main purpose of market research “is to provide relevant data that will help solve marketing problems, a business will encounter”(Source). Try to use both primary and secondary research.

However my advice is don’t get too disheartened at the thought of it, keep it simple and use resources at hand. You should know a lot already about your industry and your customers should be able to provide the remainder. I have created a 20 page “FM” market questionnaire in my audit that makes it easy for my clients to understand their market and gives them a clear insight into their industry. By breaking down the areas you want to understand, it will make it easier for you to use the data after.

Also why not email existing customers and use social media to sent out surveys to get feedback which you can use for your overall plan. Use  Google Docs , iContact or Mailchimp for creating and emailing surveys.  Other cost effective ways is telephone surveys which will also provide you with results quickly.

Your research should help you understand:

• Buying behaviour
• Identify potential customers
• Size of market
• Areas to target
• Defining your product/service
• Pricing
• Direct & indirect competition in your industry
• What marketing to invest in

Once you gather all this information, use it to create your plan that will attract more customers to your business.

3. Set out & plan your sales & marketing goals

Using this research, create a marketing plan that will suit your business and budget.

Set out a clear marketing strategy that will be the foundation of a well written marketing plan.  This can include the corporate vision that gives the long term direction of the business.

Once the strategy is in place, you can set clear marketing goals that need to be measurable and will provide you with the information that the plan is working when it is implemented.

The marketing plan should clearly define the following aspects of the business.

• Financial data
• Product data
• Sales & distribution data
• market data from your research

For a view of the content that should go into a detailed marketing plan, check out Finn Media marketing plan content list.

The plan is a guide and will be a essential tool in shaping your company into a profitable and attractive business where customers will want to shop. Remember you wont always need a detailed plan but do create one especially if it only includes action plans , controls and reviews. This will give you focus in implementing your plan to complete your goals.

4. Include cost effective marketing solutions and digital marketing

Within your plan you will be using inbound (attracting customers)and outbound marketing (Sales approach & paid advertising), so carefully choose the most suitable promotion for your business and budget. One effective marketing promotion every business should also include is some form of Digital marketing.

Digital marketing is the promoting of brands using all forms of digital advertising channels to reach consumers. This includes Internet, digital television, mobile, social media marketing and any other form of digital media. Internet digital marketing using databases, SEO and PPC can be a very cost effective way to promote your business. (See FAQ)

Every business have or should have a presence on line whether its your own business website or a free directory site to promote your company. Use SEO to increase your page rank, Google adwords if advertising online, Social media to engage with your customers and send out newsletters promoting your business. Always make sure the newsletter is attractive to the target audience , otherwise they will press the delete button before reading it, (Remember the subject text is the most important line). There is a lot more to talk about with Digital marketing and I hope to create a new blog post soon explaining it further but in the meantime, start researching what digital marketing will suit your business and create an online marketing plan .

5. Give responsibility to the person implementing plan & monitoring its progress

Once the plan is created, don’t leave it on a shelf to gather dust! Remember action speaks louder than words so get that first meeting arranged to start discussing the plan and allocate a person, (yourself, staff member, outside marketer) to be in charge of it.

By handing responsibility of the plan to someone will increase the chances of it being implemented. Their role is to monitor the actions and communicate with all persons involved in carrying out duties in the plan. They will also monitor results and should amend the plan if required. Basically it is their responsibility and they should be awarded or scolded if problems occur.

6. Review – Review – Review – Review

This is one of the most important steps in the whole process. While the plan made sound good in theory, it is only when it is implemented that we can see what is working and not working. Weekly/Monthly meetings should be held to review the whole process with the key people so changes  can be made quickly and effectively to keep the goals in full view.

Also use tools such as Google documents to allow each member to add data which will show what is working. For example, one sheet should show what marketing action where each inquiry is coming from, another to show where website is ranking each week including website viewers etc. This will keep it all transparent and allow clear and concise communication within your organisation.

I hope this blog post has been of interest and please leave a comment. Also please contact me if you have any further questions.

Denis Finnegan is MD of Finn Media Ltd

denis@finnmedia.ie

Article on Tips for Developing a Meaningful Market Analysis from Stengel solutions

Useful tool to help with keywords  Google sets

Online marketing plan from Mulley communications mulley.ie marketingplan/

8 Things you should know before hiring a marketing consultant : Finn Media archive

Porters five forces  from learnmarketing.net

Email marketing handbook from Marketing Sherpa

With all the confusion out there over titles, links, and Meta descriptions, it can be difficult for website owners to put their head around what their site needs to do to push its way past their competitors up search engines.

Clear your head

First step

is to clear your head of all the jargon, and go back to basics when creating your webpage content. Ask your self two simple questions.

1. What is the viewer who is looking for my product/service/information want?
2. Does the webpage they find provide all that information?

An added tip would be to email all your customers and potential customers with a simple questionnaire where they tell you exactly what they want from your website!

Create webpages separately

By asking those two questions , you will discover what your individual webpages should be. If you sell services, try to create webpages for each service providing all the information the website visitor needs to make a decision. Include all keywords (you still need to think about these!) that will help search engines place your website into the hands of the internet visitor.

Focused keywords

Take a little time to research all keywords while focusing on the individual pages. Use tools to help you pick the correct keywords for the different markets where you do business. Use resources such as Google webmaster tool to pick your keywords and Google alerts for ideas on relevant content. By researching your keywords, use them for paragraph headers (Google likes good clean layout) to help the webpage reader to guide their way around your webpage providing information that will fulfil all their needs and the two questions above will provide all your answers.

Research done, now what i do?

Now get started and write down the content for each webpage using the keywords and the information your customers provided.  Always keep your mind focused on creating content that is high quality and focused. Each page should be interesting to the reader, clear word content (copy) .

House keeping

Like cleaning your house, tidy your webpages by indexing all your pages and add titles and meta descriptions that match the content of the individual page. This allows the Google spiders to find you easily and to make it all work well, link each page to the rest of your website so Google and your visitor can find all the content they need from the about you page right up to the contact page! Once done get a sitemap created which places all the links in a easily read format.

Tell the world

Now its all done, tell the worlds about your website by using social media like Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon  and Twitter to link your site content. Send out monthly/quarterly newsletters, type up blogs and guest blog.  Syndicate press releases when you have real news to tell.

Remember by designing your website around what your readers and search engines needs, Your new website viewer is happy, Google, Yahoo & Bing and happy, making you happy with all the website traffic your site is generating.

Best of luck with your website on making it work for your business. For any more information, please feel free to email me directly at denis@finnmedia.ie or visit www.finnmedia.ie

For more marketing tips check out my main blog page.

Denis Finnegan is marketing consultant and always focused on increasing sales and profile.

As the majority of all buying decisions start with an online search it is important your website appears on top. Below are facts to prove this.

1. The first ranking position in the search results receives 42.25% of all click-through traffic
2. The second position receives 11.94%
3. Third position on the first page obtains 8.47%
4. The fourth placed position on page one receives 6.05%
5. The others on the first page are under 5% of click through traffic
6. The first ten results (page one ) received 89.71% of all click-through traffic,
7. The next 10 results (normally listed on the second page of results) received 4.37%
8. Third page receives a total  of 2.42 %
9. The fifth page receives a total of only 1.07%
10. All other pages of results received less than 1% of total search traffic clicks.

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog

Denis Finnegan is SEO and Internet marketing specialist Finn Media Ltd

Thankfully i have come across this diagram which I can now use to prove the point that when using social media for SEO and SEM, Companies need to look at all options.

Hope this diagram helps you.

Kind regards

Denis Finnegan, Owner of Finn Media Ltd

denis@finnmedia.ie

Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Linkedin are all buzz words are the minute but is it a fad or should all business have some sort of Social Media in place.

Yes is the simple answer. Facebook is surpassing Google as the most viewed website and  according to Google’s webmaster , Matt Cutts, Social media marketing allows companies to interact with web audiences and in turn increases SEO ranking of your website.

However while I would advise that you put time into planning your social media I strongly recommend not to waste time implementing it. Social Media is a tool and should only be used as such. The majority of your time and of your staff should still be used in productivity work that earns you money but if implemented successfully, Social Media can drive traffic to sales.

I have outlined some points to consider when setting up Social Media

• What do you want from SM? sales, customer interaction, views to main site, all of above
• Who is your target audience and what platform(s) should  you use
• Create a Social media calendar and monitor results
• Create exclusive offers and content for your Social Media family
• Whose role is it to implement and manage the SM strategy

Denis Finnegan is Managing Director of Finn Media Ltd