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Facebook has started 2021 with some interesting changes to Pages that will help us small businesses use it for marketing. They include removing the 'like' button, making the Page News Feed properly usable and creating a Q&A section from your fans' questions.  Image credits: Facebook Find out how the changes affect small businesses like yours in our latest My Own Marketing Coach article:
www.myownmarketingcoach.com/articles/positive-changes-to-facebook-pages Would you like some help growing the following of your page? Don't know what we are talking about when we say 'engaging from your Page'? Check out our social media marketing online courses, live and digital workshops in the Stockholm area or talk to us for help with your business marketing.
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 How important is it to integrate marketing tactics? It can be crucial. Integrated marketing tactics that convey the same message across different channels is a powerful enough strategy to directly reduce marketing costs and increase sales. BackgroundThis 90-bed hotel and activity centre is in a area of Sweden that is very popular with Chinese tourists and its main season is from autumn to spring, through the winter. Guests stay for the landscape, night sky and snow-based activities. The industryEuropean hotels with specialist activities are seeing huge growth in tourists from China as a rapidly increasing middle class there becomes able to afford to travel and wants to see the sights outside of China. As hotels reimagine their services in 2020, lifetime experiences will survive better than breakfast buffets. The problemWhen we met the client, the main issue was that, although the business operated a full range of activities, many guests didn't know that until they arrived and therefore had booked their activities with another provider. Additional challenges included:
How we jumped inA guest staying at another hotel in the area took part in an activity organised by the client. They suggested to the client that they contact us for help promoting the activities and so they came to Stockholm to meet us. A happy client referral! The client’s goals for usInitially, the client asked us to deliver Content Marketing in the form of ongoing, regular blog and social media posts. Subsequently, we took on responsibility for delivering all the marketing strategy and tactics for the global marketing of the hotel. The client's trust in us gave us the freedom to solve the problems in efficient and effective way. By working on the entire marketing effort, we could integrate campaigns and channels, improving the effectiveness of them and keeping costs as low as possible. What we did to help them 
 
What the project achievedThe client needed a large increase in activity bookings and more hotel guests during the summer. The work we did achieved both these goals. We also worked to make the hotel's marketing more sustainable, enabling them to repeatedly and consistently reach a much bigger target audience. Would you like to combine your marketing activities so that you save yourself time and energy and get better results? Read more about the services we offer above and/or get in touch to talk us through your needs.
 Knowing where to put your marketing effort saves many small businesses a lot of time, money and energy. Identifying the journeys your key customer groups usually take to the point where they buy your products/services highlights the gaps. Assuming your product and market are right for each other, plugging these gaps will increase sales. BackgroundThis Swedish tech startup has developed a system that uses artificial intelligence to put the products people are most likely to buy in front of them in ecommerce stores. It was bought out by one of its own customers and almost all the staff moved to the parent company at the point they brought us onboard. The industry With the growing number of e-commerce stores comes a growing number of competing products and the market is more and more competitive. The problemThe key challenges our client faced were:
How we jumped inThe client approached us from a referral by a member of their team. They investigated other options and chose Write in Danderyd for our broad expertise and, as a smaller organisation, so that they would be an important part of our business. The client’s goals for us The client identified two key goals for our time with them: Developing the marketing strategy while taking rapidly restarting the marketing tactics Normally, we would work to set the marketing strategy first and then action the tactics but, in this case, we had to run both concurrently to support the ongoing customers and potential customers already in the pipeline. What we did to help them
The second stage was to formulate a marketing strategy that fully supported the efforts of sales team, focusing on their current target market in the short-term and, longer-term, scaling effectively to reach wider target markets and reduce the risk of churn. The key to this side was the clear identification of the journey potential customers took before purchasing the system – which often included multiple people, time and contact points with the client. The journey of one target market group looked like this:  Identifying where marketing was important in the buyer journey and what current gaps there were helped us develop a clear strategy with tactics for the business.  Search engine traffic, for example, was one missing element. It was rapidly growing in importance for the client, as industry awareness of the product availability increased and potential customers searched for solution providers.
The client needed more leads coming into the top of their sales funnel and we identified search traffic as one important source of them. 
The next strategic area was the clarification of who the system was for – what attributes did the ideal customers have and how it was best to reach their trigger points for buying the system. We built ‘personas’ for each identifiably different target customer group, looked in detail to find out who they were, what level of buying power they had (to see if the client needed to present the system to additional people before a buying decision could be taken), what their technical knowledge level was (to highlight how content targeted at them should be written), their likely goals and their likely challenges. The final step was to identify each personas’ set of value propositions – what made this system stand out from the competition and how could they succinctly say it. We produced sets of value propositions for each target market group and then narrowed it down into the best, most useable statements that would help support the buyer through their journey.   Area 1 - urgent content marketing and website management
One of the first tasks we undertook was to move the company website from Word press to an easier to self-manage CMS system to allow the company more stability and ease of use. The original site was difficult and time-consuming to edit and the team wanted something that could change with them as they grew. We created a total replica of the original site in a system that then took 10 minutes to post a professional, on-brand blog post on instead of several hours and design skills. We ran a full website review initially and provided the client with a comprehensive list of changes and improvements to boost search traffic and the usability of the website. We worked with the team to start implementing these changes. Area 2 – strategic branding
Area 3 – sales strategy, tactics and materials Although not part of the original brief, sales support became our biggest area of work and we pivoted to meet this need. Sales support was provided in series of email templates, email processes, CRM system support, sales presentation design and content, flyer design and the printing and shipping of business cards out to an event.  We created content and materials to support partnership sales. We created email content for each target market to support the sales team in their efforts to built up requests for demos of the system. On our recommendation, a series was used, and results started to appear from the fourth email in the series. We worked with the client’s CRM system to get them automatically to the correct recipient. Area 4 – preparing for the future without us
What the project achievedIn this case, the client needed both a quick fix and a strategic plan. We supported them so that they could get internally back on their feet without disruption to the existing clients and prospect clients in the pipeline and left them with the tools, processes and materials to achieve their growth ambitions.
Do you have a complex situation which requires strategic and tactical support? Read more about the services we offer above and/or get in touch to talk us through your needs.
There is no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic has added even more challenges to small business. These challenges are pushing for a change in how small businesses operate, market, and connect themselves with their current and potential customers. The pandemic has put more pressure on the smallest business owners to digitise manual activities.  After identifying the problem of time consumption with manual activities, Write in Danderyd launched the project Digital transformation in the smallest business that will focus on uncovering the secrets of an easier everyday life as a smallest business owner - those of us working as consultants, coaches and running businesses with few or no employees.  The purpose of the research project is to find out what tools or processes will save business owners time and money by transforming manual activities into digital and automated ones; to simplify your everyday life as a business owner. We will:
We will look at which processes and tools are trending and which ones are recommended to simplify your business life. The outcomes of the project, including tips that can be easily implemented, will be reported on Write in Danderyd’s website blog, by email (so make sure you are on our list!) and directly to clients by the team.
Follow Nellie on this journey and don't hesitate to share your thoughts - positive and not-so-positive - in the comments below. Alternatively, get in touch with us here.
Write in Danderyd is a full-service marketing agency that provides all the services the smallest of business needs to grow and thrive. What can we help you with?  We offer:
1. Content marketing  Content marketing works to pull visitors into your website and to reach them there, on social media and by email. It is the best thing for building up awareness of your business and for taking potential clients through their buyer journey to the stage when the book with or buy from you. In practice, this means putting new or updated material on your website, often in the form of blog posts and then spreading the news that the new material is there via the channels. For a small business, it can be the main source of new business. We can help you work out what content to put up, we can produce it for you or use content you have created and help you get it out to your potential and current clients. 2. Social media marketing  Social media marketing covers everything from creating text and graphic posts, keyword research and posting to engagement and follower-building activities. For the smallest businesses, posting when you have very few followers isn't where the focus should be. We can produce and publish your content and grow the number of people looking at it. We can do it as a project or as a regular activity, in as little as two hours a month. 3. Graphic design  People make decisions based on their first impression of a company, a person or a product so good design is crucial for business success. Small businesses need everything from a logo to social media images and they need them from the very beginning. We work with you to create everything from a logo - including versions of your logo for every use, printing stationery and the right sizes and formats for social media sites (each, of course, being different!) - to newsletter design, brochure design, websites, signs, event equipment and everything inbetween. 4. Website design and management  Web design plays a vital role in how your brand is perceived and how your website works can allow or stop people form booking or buying your products and services. Another important factor is how well the website works for you. Can you easily update it, add what you need to be visible and change the content without it taking forever? Does it look good when you make changes? We work with you to find the best system for you and your business and then get it setup and running. We support websites made in all systems and can help you with anything. 5. Search engine optimisation (SEO)  If your website isn’t optimised for search engines, they literally can’t see it and won’t show it to your target market. SEO explains what you site is about and who the targeted audience is based on the information the site provides. We provide SEO services designed especially for the smallest of businesses - so you don't pay for something you don't need (yet...!): WEBSITE REVIEW: A comprehensive review of your website, including user experience (what it is like for a stranger to use your site), design and content, plus all the above SEO elements. Included are specific tips under each section and the information you need to see and work on your on-page SEO. ON-PAGE SEO WORK: Working through each page on your website, we create and put in keywords, titles and descriptions for each one. We'll look at your images and add optimised descriptions for them too. As many or as little hours as you want and need LOCAL SEO: If your target market is right in your neighbourhood, there are specific cost-effective SEO tactics we can use to get you in front of as many locals as possible. OFF-PAGE SEO: Social media marketing and blog outreach are two affordable off-page SEO tactics that we can help you with. 6. Newsletter and email marketing  Potential customers/clients need to ‘meet’ you a good few times before they are likely to buy your products/services. Email is one of the cheapest, most effective and traceable approaches to get them understanding why they need to buy from you. We can get you set up and ready to reach out to your audience and use our experience and your past marketing to establish what your audience likes to receive by email. We can run campaigns for you or help you work out how to do it yourself. 7. PR and media  There are occasions where getting coverage in the media gets your message out to the audience you want and need. We work with local, national, and international journalists and target press for both the public and specific, targeted audiences. PR is perfect for book and research report launches, for example. 8. Events  Under normal circumstances, we help organise and run events around the world. Right now, we help publicise and host events across the internet! We can help with a whole event and we can help with just one element – signs and posters, social media promotion, online course systems and anything else. 9. Advertising  From billboards and posters to pay-per-click online advertising, we can help you with your paid marketing campaigns. We will also advise you to stay away from channels and advertising tactics that don't work for the smallest of businesses - we'll help you spend your budget in the most effective way. 10. Sales support  Most business owners know, to an extent, how potential clients turn into paying ones (and the same for customers in/on a shop). What is harder is working out the point where potential clients/customers drop out of their buying process - where are you losing potential business? We look for the entire journey the buyer takes and spot the gaps, supporting you with ideas, content and tactics to plug them and build up your sales. We can advise on marketing and sales automation too - getting technology to move potential clients through their journey without needing your personal attention. We can also work with you on specific sales campaigns, from filling the sales funnel at the top with new leads to converting prospects into buyers at the final hurdle. All with your small business in mind. Why choose us: Write in Danderyd’s marketing services are specifically designed to build and grow the smallest of businesses. That means the business you run from home, the consulting firm you have, the local business you’ve set up and any business that has less than 10 employees. Or no employees.
We pick and choose the best marketing tactics that work for the smallest of businesses. We don’t recommend or use tactics that take a lot of time, energy and budget to action. We don’t use tactics that need you to have 10,000+ followers on social media or an email list with 10,000+ addresses on it. If you have 10 email addresses, that is where we will start. Learn to market your business yourself Sometimes you need to market your business yourself and we support that too. We run courses and workshops (mostly online at the moment but IRL too!). Check out our selection and let us know if you’d like to learn about something we haven’t got a course for: My Own Marketing Coach. Contact us Every business is different. Get in touch with us to discuss yours. We see a lot of small businesses trying to market on social media. Creating great content and posting it, only for it to be pretty well ignored. If you have done any of our courses, you'll know we go on (and on...) about posting being no more than 20% of the job. The other 80% contains engagement and marketing building (getting more of the right kind of followers to read and react to your posts). Social media marketing is not for the faint hearted. Each social media portal is one channel and needs a marketing campaign with all its elements to make it a success. Plus a lot of time and effort. Hiring someone 'young' to manage your social media is not sensible. Neither is hiring a social media manager without checking that they are properly qualified - that means education (preferably marketing and not just social media) and experience that shows they can build leads or sales for a client. Using a posting system, like Buffer, Hootsuite or Later, helps you post a little faster and a little easier. It does not help you market your business. Social media marketing is marketing just the same. It needs to fit properly into the buying journey your potential clients/customers take and it needs to directly move them one or more steps closer to the buying decision. If it doesn't, it is a waste of time. Does social media really fit in your potential clients/customers' business journey? If you aren't getting sales from your social media efforts - saying that it is 'brand awareness' doesn't count - brand awareness is a step at the beginning of the process and should still add sales at the end of the process, if it is working - or you aren't sure social media is where your target market is looking for your service/product, get in touch with us and we'll work it out with you. If you are marketing on social media, here is our take on doing it yourself versus using us. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss any aspect of it.  As the real world changes, the online world does too. More than half the entire world population uses social media and its use increased as people started to get stuck at home. This poses a dilemma for small business owners. On the one hand, not 'wasting' money on marketing while businesses are closed, sales can't happen and income is so uncertain seems sensible. On the other hand, others see the value in remaining visible and protecting future sales. There are also those who have, in a positive way, taken advantage of the crisis to reach out to their target market and ask for their support through this period. Market forces usually keep the playing field somewhat level and that's been true in the healthy economic climate we have benefited from for years, up to January this year. Now it has now been shaken to pieces.  While saving money is sensible in a down period, being invisible isn't. Companies that best survive in recessions are those that market through it and therefore get sales as soon as recovery starts. It can be fatal for a company to ignore the competition's activities and lose their market share. If you have been busy surviving and marketing has had to take a back seat (or been left behind), here are some things to think about:
There are various cost-effective areas you can use to reach out to your target market: If this feels overwhelming or you don't have time to do this yourself, reach out to us. We have two ways that we can help you:
A garden services client of ours also sells Christmas trees. We run a social media marketing campaign for them each November and December, building up awareness and sales of the trees and helping fuel bookings coming in at the end of the winter. Whatever size and type of business you have, if you need help marketing it and want to grow your sales, get in touch with us.
There are far more options for building websites than most people realise. Picking the right one starts with working out what you need and want.  Is the site a place to reinforce who you are or is it your shop-front? Do you need a custom design or could your branding fit into a template designed to work well on the web? Are you looking for clients to contact you directly or customers to buy online from you? Do you need password-protection, membership areas and online courses?  The problem with specialists  Choosing from the range of options There are two main groups of website building systems that are best for your size and type of business: 1. Hosted website builders These are the easiest to use and are the most stable options for building your website.  You may have heard of Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace and One. These are all hosted website builders. There are hosted website builders that specialise in online shopping websites. These include Shopify, Tictail, If your business model is membership and training-based, there are hosted website builders that provide you with all you need to manage members and password-protected areas and online courses. Kajabi is a well-liked option but you see that the pricing reflects how powerful it is. Some of the standard systems, like Wix and Weebly can handle basic versions of membership sites and training online and they are far cheaper. 2. Self-hosted content management systems These over a lot more opportunity for custom development - programming your own site elements - but this comes at a price. These really require help from a developer who specialising in the particular system. They need hosting somewhere and they need protecting. Security risks are higher, especially if you don't update the software immediately as a new update comes through.  The most well-known self-hosted CMS is Wordpress. It isn't alone, there is Drupal and Joomla, Magento and a whole lot more. There are also custom coded sites which big companies with complex sites and a high level of security use. How to choose the best one for your business    PLEASE READ IF LOOPIA IS YOUR DOMAIN REGISTRATION PROVIDER
Loopia contacted us and explained: "On Thursday, an email was sent from someone claiming to be Loopia AB asking you to verify your email for one of your domains. The fake emails were stopped relatively quickly but we know that some of our customers have received the email and therefore, we want to send out a warning to all of you." "The email is very similar to the legitimate email sent when registering a domain or changing a domain owner and you are asked to verify your email address. However, the real email from Loopia only requires you to click on the link to verify your email while this fake email also requires a login as an attempt to access your login credentials at Loopia." Loopia is working continually to stop scams. More information can be found on Loopia's blog here. Are you in a position where you can't sell anything right now? There isn't much we can say to make that feel any better but we can recommend a distraction that will set your business up to grow as life returns to normal. Now is the time to protect your brand recognition. There have been many downturns in the world's economies and, while many businesses have plans ready for downturns, forgetting to plan for the upturn can spell disaster. We know this from studying what happens to business before, through and after recessions. There are many cases of companies going out of business during the upturn. Surely that's something that can be avoided? Let's put it another way: If no-one is buying your service or product now and they aren't buying from your competitors either, then you are competitively equal. You aren't losing any more or less than they are. If they spend the next 4-6 months building up more recognition of their services/products and you do nothing, what will happen if, in six months time, someone needs just what you offer? Will they come to you? No. They will have forgotten all about you and you will have lost out to your competition. We don't recommend asking people to buy from you right not - and certainly not asking people to risk infection by doing so (grrrr....). Regularly reminding customers and potential customers about the services and product you offer is a great idea. (Even we do say so ourselves :)).  Use the same message over and over if you want to. You want my advice? (I hope so... :)) Say the same thing 20 times. I'm challenging you to do that. Pick a service that you offer or, even better, a pain point that you clients/customers have that you help solve and put the message out to your email and social media lists 20 times over the next three months. Do you accept the challenge?? :) Here is one of our message versions. Get in touch with us for advice - a call is free!  |
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