Tony Attwood's Blog

If you have a website you can set up a blog – all you need is a free Word Press blog (you can get one from http://wordpress.com/) and a regular stream of text.

The only problem is time – as with all free software there is stuff to learn and time to be spent getting the hang of what the process is all about. And as for writing it can take time to write the blog and to find out what sort of articles attract the audience.

There’s also the issue of gathering an audience – although if you are publishing interesting material readers will find you. (There was a piece on this recently on the Creative Direct news group, but if you missed it, give me a call on 01536 399 000 and I’ll talk you through it).

If you want some help, even then the cost is quite modest.

Hamilton House can help you set up a blog – and can help you develop the sort of content on it that will generate interest from readers, create more readers, and take you up the rankings.

The cost for buying a web address, installing the program and setting up the whole site is just £75.

In addition there is an annual charge of £15 per annum for housing and maintaining the site.

If you want to have a home page on the site separate from the blog, this can be added for a further £15.

These costs include a short discussion (normally around 10 minutes) on the phone to show you how to put copy onto the site. You’ll end up with a site of the style of this one – although with a different “look”.

Alternatively if you would like us to write copy for your blog and then upload copy ourselves so you don’t have to use the program, this can be done. The cost of writing the copy is usually around £400 per month, with us writing a piece each week. The charge for uploading the copy is £15 per month.

Blogs come in all shapes and sizes. If you want to see how far we can go, and how a blog looks when aimed at a very different audience take a look at another of our ventures: www.blog.emiratesstadium.info

And if you want to know more, please email me Tony@hamilton-house.com or call 01536 399 000

Google Alerts is one of those facilities that some people use all day and others don’t touch – which is a shame because it has a great value. It is also something that those of us with a creative bent tend to think is all a bit mechanical – but it can be a rich source of information and ideas.

I’m going to give one example that is relevant to my work by way of illustration as to how the whole process can work, but I want to make it clear, I think this approach can work for almost any business, selling anything.

Last year I published a novel which is focussed on events around the Woolwich Arsenal 100 years ago. In order to publicise the book I set up a website (www.woolwicharsenal.co.uk) about the book, and a blog (www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk) which explores issues around the book. The blog is updated 3 or 4 times a week and covers a whole range of subjects related to Woolwich Arsenal and the book – most of the time it doesn’t retell the story from the novel.

That is all straight forward. The blog has been going for a about 6 months now, and gets around 25,000 readers a month. It also gets picked up by quite a few other sites and stories on the blog get reproduced all over the internet.

I know about this viral effect because I have a Google Alert for the exact phrase “Woolwich Arsenal”. Of course that alert also brings me news of delays on the railway line around that station, and tells me about the property for sale in the area, but each day I tend to get something like this

• 5 or 6 irrelevant stories
• 2 or 3 details of how one of my blog stories has been picked up by another site
• 1 or 2 details of stories about Woolwich Arsenal that are relevant to my book.

I follow up these l or 2 stories, and find that in 90% of the situations, the references appear on sites where one can comment. Generally speaking I find there is something I can add to the story that is on these sites, along the lines of, “what you might be interested to know is…” and then some details and either a reference back to my site, or a link to the book. If links are not allowed, at the very least I put the title of the book in.

What that means is that every day another one or two sites have at best links back to my site, and at worst, a mention of the book. Gradually my site gets more readers, it creeps up the rankings, and awareness of the book rises. Those links tend to stay forever.

“Ah,” but I hear you say, “Isn’t this all horribly time consuming?”

Actually it is not, after the first week it becomes very quick because one knows what one is looking for, and in all honesty, most of my comments on sites are much the same. I think it now takes about five minutes a day.

Which even at the incredibly low salary I pay myself, is still far less than it would cost to do the same thing through Google Ad Words. People use Google Adwords because they are fairly simple (although I always find their site a bit troublesome) and my approach seems just too complex.

But it is free, and it works, and it generates results. And it is cumulative. The links I put in last October are by and large still there today.

If you want to talk about this do give me a call on 01536 399 000 or email Tony@hamilton-house.com This service is part of what we do for our clients in the Velocity programme – there are details of that on www.Velocity.ac - so if you want to try the approach but outsource it, that is an option too.

Tony Attwood

It is not uncommon to find that sales in a particular market can get stuck, and for me, the difference between companies can be measured at this point. Do they do nothing and wait for the market, do they change their marketing, or do they do some research?

I believe the only reasonable ways forward are approaches two and three, simply because doing nothing means opening the door for the competition, who may well be advertising quite aggressively at this time. When that is the case, the market can fall further. Indeed aggressive marketing from elsewhere could be the cause of the failure thus far.

Changing the advertising can be difficult if you are used to doing similar types of advertising most of the time. Looking at a new creative approach, or indeed an idea which also uses new media, can be quite worrying and it is tempting to look at a radical approach and think “That won’t work.” And of course you can be right – the whole point of an experiment is that it is an experiment, which can fail.

But at least in direct marketing one can try out new approaches in low volume – there is no need to send out 10,000 items – a few hundred will usually tell you if the process is working or not.

The alternative is the research based approach. Again, the research does not have to cost much and might involve…

1: A review of the competition’s current advertising, just to see how your approach and your advertised benefits compare with theirs.

2: An online survey of potential customers to see what they are doing vis a vis your product at present. Are they buying? Holding back because of the recent recession, or what?

3: Some unstructured telephone calling to ask potential clients if they have a need for the product, who they use etc. The point about calls like this is that you don’t think of them as a sales call but rather as a way of finding out what is in people’s minds. If they say, “oh yes we used to do that, but haven’t done for several years – I don’t think we’d go back to that” then you have evidence that is as helpful as a detailed on line questionnaire.

We need to keep both these approaches in mind because both the experiments with marketing, and the research can give us valuable information and in the end are the only ways to get out of a dip in the market.

If you would like to talk about this please do give Hamilton House a call on 01536 399 000. All of these services are available from us on a one-off basis, or as part of the Velocity programme (there’s details on http://www.velocity.ac/business.html

Tony Attwood

Experimentation is important – at least that is my view in terms of direct marketing.

This philosophy is not just something I pass on to our clients, when I suggest that they trial an idea rather than jumping straight in with it immediately.  It is also something that Hamilton House has done for many years.

Indeed most of the recommendations that we make to our clients are based on experiments that we have carried out over the years.

One particular experiment started in 2001 when I hit on the notion that it should be possible to build a brand image without going to all the expense of hiring brand consultants and buying in a lot of display advertising.

My thinking was that if one created a brand name, and wrote about it regularly in a series of sales letters, one could create the brand in the readers’ minds and thus do the branding job at a fraction of the price.

For this experiment I decided to invent a public house, and I gave it the rather eccentric name “The Toppled Bollard”.  (There is a reason for this, but you are going to have to call me to find out!)

Every two weeks thereafter I wrote a little story of around 300 words, and put that as the front item in each promotion.  It became, in fact, the sales letter.

What was interesting was the way in which the name The Toppled Bollard stuck in people’s minds in association with ourselves.  Indeed years after we stopped running the stories people who had never been customers of ours would refer to it.

The Toppled Bollard therefore always gave us a way into the conversation – when people phoned there was a warmth that came from them – even when they were highly dubious about direct mail.

A typical conversation would run…

Potential Customer: Of course I don’t read any of this junk mail, but I’m told that this might be the way forward for us.

Me: Well we do try and get non-readers to read our direct mail through our unusual approach.

Potential Customer: Oh yes, I like your Toppled Bollard stories.

Me: That’s interesting. You don’t read any direct mail, but you know the name of a mythical pub that I wrote about for a few years…

My point is that as a branding exercise it worked gloriously.  It created a concept that people always associated with us.  “Hamilton House?  Oh you’re the guys who write those stories about the pub…”  We became well known because of our advertising – the perfect example of branding.

Thus we’ve proven that branding through direct marketing (either by email or by direct mail or indeed on a blog) can work very well, and at a fraction of the cost of normal branding.

If you would like to talk about branding do give me a call on 01536 399 000. If you have any questions you can email tony@hamilton-house.com

And if you would like to read some of the Toppled Bollard stories I am gradually putting them up on www.blog.toppled.info There’s a mix of the original stories that launched the idea, and one or two more recent ones as well.

I’m a great believer in “knowing your enemy” and if one is an advertiser via email, then the spammers are one’s enemy.

So, unlike most people, I actually do read some of the junk emails that come my way each day, just to stay in touch with what people are up to.

One way of telling that an email is a spam is by looking at the return address. By and large, when Revenue and Customs write and tell you that you have a tax refund due, they don’t ask you to reply to a yahoo address – and that has been a bit of a giveaway.

But I got one today, which actually appears to be from a revenue and customs email address (@hmrc.gov.uk) – clever stuff.

However you can still tell that its a hoax. Here’s the text…

Tax Refund Notification

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity, we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 988.50 GBP.

Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 2-3 days in order to process it.

Click here [link deleted by Tony] to submit you tax refund request

Note : A refund can be delayed a variety of reasons, for example submitting invalid records or applying after deadline.

Best Regards

HM Revenue & Customs

—-

After that there are links to Business Link, Crown Copyright and other likely places.

But of course there is a giveaway. Revenue and Customs would never say “Best regards”. Actually they don’t send out emails.

If you would like to read something slightly amusing, the Toppled Bollard stories are being published on www.blog.toppled.info (I’ll explain more on this another time)

And if you want to talk about ways of grabbing attention on emails, letters, blogs etc, just forward me a copy and I’ll call you back.

Tony@hamilton-house.com

The most cost effective form of direct marketing that there is involves having your own list of the email addresses of customers and potential customers.

If you haven’t got such a list, or you think maybe you have but you are not sure, I would say you should check the situation now (well, not exactly now, finish reading this first, but then check).

If you have not got such a list or if it is out of date, or not typed up into a spreadsheet, my answer is, start this now, this minute, before doing anything else, right away, without hesitation.

Quite simply a list like this is your gold dust.

First put on the list all your customers.  Then start work on all the people who have enquired.

When I have said this in the past, what I have found is that some firms have come back to me and said, “We looked but we don’t have such a list,” or “It wasn’t in a format we could use.”

But my view is that even if you have to phone up every individual customer and ask for the email address of the person to whom you sell, and then if you have to pay a temp to type up the data into a spreadsheet, this is still worth doing, because this list is so powerful.

Once you have a list of customers and potential customers (even if it is very incomplete) you need to write to them every week.  Not with the same email over and over again – that is a total waste of time, but with information, thoughts, background, offers, insights and everything else.   In fact, what you have to do is build a relationship with them.  You need to tell the recipients that you are a jolly nice person working in a jolly nice firm, that sells very good products and services.

Obviously you can do all this on your own, without calling on Hamilton House for anything.  But just in case you do think that we are awfully nice people who maybe could lend a hand here’s a quick summary of the sort of things HHM does in this field

1. We can do the research to help you build you list of customers and potential customers.
2. We can help you write the weekly email that goes out to them.
3. We can hold your list for you, set it up with the “unsubscribe” button and the other best practice and legal requirements, and do the email each week.
4. If you want to control the emailing yourself we can supply software that will do exactly that.
5. We can turn the weekly emails into blogs – which is not a bad idea since recent research shows that companies running blogs get a huge increase in the number of sales they get, as a result of the blog.

My colleagues and I will be thrilled beyond belief to talk through any of these approaches with you – just call 01536 399 000.

But, if you feel that you would prefer to read more of my exciting prose before talking, here’s some starting points…

First, if you want to see some examples of promotional emails of the new style, take a look at www.blog.hamilton-house.com These emails are turned into blogs, but the content is pretty much the same as the original email.

Second, the software that we use to send out tens of thousands of emails a week across hundreds of lists was developed to our particular specification throughout last year and this year, and is now available for sale – with full tech support.   There are details at http://www.yesmail.org.uk/software.html

Finally, if you wish to pay for the emails you send out on a job by job basis without having to buy the software this can be done via Hamilton House.  There are details of this at http://www.yesmail.org.uk/broadcastemails.html

But probably it is quicker to give myself, or one of my colleagues a call.   01536 399 000 usually works.

Tony Attwood

Businesses that have blogs do better than businesses without.  And those with a number of blog articles above a critical threshold, do even better.

Businesses with blogs generate 67% more online leads than businesses without blogs. Blog size does matter – and not only is it good to have more, rather than fewer articles on the blog site, the effectiveness of the blog rises ever faster as more and more articles are put on the site.

These findings come from a report from Marketing Charts (full link at the end).

In addition, other sites are more likely to link to a blog that offers a steady stream of content. This has the effect of taking the site up the rankings, and of course bringing in more customers.

Businesses with blogs of 24-plus articles are more likely to be committed to updating their blog frequently and, thus, are likely to generate more traffic from referring sites.

Once blogs reach the 12-23 posted article threshold, the number of leads it picks up rises, and the rate of increase in the number of contacts from new customers rises faster than the number of articles on the site up to about 52 articles.

Based on its research, Hubspot offers the following advice to business bloggers:

The articles need to be informative and give background on issues relevant to the company, and of course need to use keywords that people search for via Google.

Always seek out inbound links to your site from other companies. These are a central factor in Google’s ranking. Other related sites are likely to link to a blog that provides interesting and fresh content.

Work hard to increase repeat visitors by putting up exciting and interesting information daily. There are a number of basic IT training courses available that would help you develop your computer and blogging skills. These skills would then enable you to develop your own company blogs and inform your customers about any updates.

Source

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/bigger-business-blogs-better-lead-bringers-12605/

For the first time in two and a half years more UK companies have raised their marketing budgets than made cutbacks, according to the latest Bellwether survey.

The survey shows 21% of companies reported that they had raised their budgets in the first quarter of 2010, compared with 16% that said they cut back spending.

This is the first time since the third quarter in 2007 that a higher percentage of companies have reported an increase in marketing budgets than a decrease.

Internet-related marketing has been on the up for some time now and is expected to grow for the third quarter in a row. The proportion of companies increasing digital marketing spend was the largest in two years.

Direct marketing budgets however remained unchanged and PR (which comes in the ”all other” category) was once again down.

42% of marketing executives said they were more optimistic about the financial prospects for their company than they were in the last quarter of 2009. Almost a third were more optimistic about the prospects for their industry as a whole.

So here’s the question – when everything else is picking up, why is direct marketing static?

The growth in advertising spending is real, and is part of the general upturn in the economy.  But direct marketing is in fact in a strange situation, because of the growth of email.

Email appears to offer direct marketing at a much lower price, and indeed many firms that have been running into marketing difficulty have found some solace in email marketing.

Thus the volume of marketing is probably increasing, but the cost of the marketing appears to be going down.

The problem is that just as poor direct marketing can bring in poor results, so this is also true with poor email marketing.  And because it is possible for companies to set up and do email marketing entirely themselves, it is also possible that they can get some very poor results.

For this reason I suspect that there is going to be a further shake out in the field of direct marketing.  But for now the figures showing static direct marketing spend need to take the advent of low cost email marketing into account.

If you would like to talk about email and direct marketing and the comparative use of each, please do give me a call on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

I have written before about the tricks that are used in promoting email lists, and we seem to be in a new period of these.

A number of companies that sell email lists are encouraging recipients of emails to open an email or click on a link by saying that the individual will be entered in a weekly or monthly draw.

The net result of this is that people do tend to stay on the email list (rather than unsubscribe) and click on lots of emails, not because they are reading anything, but rather because they are hoping to win the regular lottery.

One other side effect of this approach is that it allows the company owning the email list the chance to mail the list over and over again – sometimes daily, sometimes several times a day.

The unsubscribe rate stays low, and the open or click through rate stays high, again because of artificial means – whereas normally heavy emailing results in people unsubscribing.

In other words, while we normally use the unsubscribe rate as a measure of reader dissatisfaction with the promotions, and we use the open and click through rate as a measure of interest, these connections are destroyed.

A really exciting headline which in a non-manipulated mailing might get a very high open rate and lead to a lot of click throughs, will now get a rate that is similar to every other email – because it is the arrival of the email that triggers the click (in order to enter the prize draw for free) rather than the content of the email.

I will fully admit to a bias in this matter because Hamilton House doesn’t use this technique, and we have always thought it an approach which distorts the effectiveness of the email.  Obviously those who do use the “reward for clicking” approach, will argue that it is nothing of the kind, and that it simply encourages people to open the emails.

Only a detailed comparison between a promotion undertaken with a “prize draw for clicking” list and one undertaken with a list not subject to this approach would give an answer, and I don’t think that this has ever been done.

My concern is the prize for clicking approach does tend to reveal a much higher number of email addresses than otherwise would be the case, since it encourages people to subscribe to the list many times over.

In the end sales are the only absolute measure of course.

There’s details of the Hamilton House email lists (all mailed without incentives to click) on www.yesmail.co.uk or do give me a call on 01536 399 000

Tony Attwood