There are many, many people who can build a fairy cake. Some of them are even edible! All of them are constructed with love and care and no one would even consider leaving out the sugar or flour or mixing in the eggs without cracking the shells.
Use the Right Ingredients
Admittedly, if this is your first foray into the world of baking you might make the odd mistake, that’s only natural. However, if you’re going to bake on a regular basis or if you are planning to open a cake shop, you are going to have to refine your recipe until its perfect and build on that.
Use Common Sense
Common sense really, if your livelihood depends on you getting it right and continuing to get it right, you have to get it right. If you don’t, the lady in the teashop down the road with the massive buns will; and you’ll lose business. So, to increase your turnover and profitability you need to do it a little bit better than everyone else. Simple business sense, simple common sense.
The Company Website
That’s fine if you’re a cake builder but what if you’re a Marketing Manager or CEO of an SME? How do you do it a bit better than your competitors? Well, if you have half a brain cell you will have a company website. If you have several brain cells it will have been professionally built and not put together in a darkened bedroom by the office cleaners fifteen-year-old son in between drags on a Capstan Full Strength and pints of White Lightning.
The site looks good; your prices look good so why aren’t the customers coming? Well, so far in the analogy of the fairy cake your marketing has got as far as the mixing bowl and a bit of flour and no further. Lets face it; no one is going to want that.
You are not an Expert
Marketing and in particular, online marketing needs some of that love and care I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, where anyone is prepared to learn about the art of fairy cake building, in the big bad world of online marketing, anyone with an opinion is an industry expert, and that’s why for many, online marketing doesn’t really work and these same people will have hours of excuses for why it didn’t and why it won’t.
Rubbish! The problem is that the recipe hasn’t been followed and instead of addressing the problem, the would be baker has convinced himself that the oven is buggered.
Baking the Perfect Fairy Cake
There are lots of examples of why the attitude is all wrong. People will latch on to one element and exploit it to death. They have to realise that like baking the perfect fairy cake, it takes lots of ingredients to make online marketing work and work well. It is the combination of all marketing factors that will help propel your business forward.
Engage
For instance, don’t expect to sell your product/services on every social network made to man; it just doesn’t work that way. Use social media to build your brand and link to new content on your website.
Don’t post a blog on your site every few days advertising what you sell, your main website will do that, instead write about your industry news, things your company has achieved, any related information in the news, funny stories, you get the idea.
The Cherry on Top
Everyone is not an expert in the world of online marketing and the chances are you are one of them. Take advice from the real Pro’s or better still engage a reputable agency that will save you more money than you have lost. When you realise that’s the way forward then you have the icing on the cake. Improved turnover and increased profits? That’s just the cherry on the top.
