Words to the Wise

Are you even recognizing it as a slowdown? Despite the media frenzy surrounding the credit crunch, mortgage crisis, food prices et al, I have clients and friends who are defying ‘logic’ and actually doing well in this economy. In fact, a few are even growing faster BECAUSE of the downturn.

If you’re like me, you’re taking the downturn as an opportunity to grow and profit in new areas you might not have thought of. One of my clients is doing this by taking their online real estate business into new countries. I’m taking my business global thanks to a couple of new clients on the other side of the world.

Here are some strategic ways to stay ahead, and even grow, despite the economic downturn:

1. Have a Plan

It’s one thing for you and your business to enter an economic downturn mentally prepared, but are you prepared on paper? Do you have a plan that trims unnecessary spending? It doesn’t matter if you’re a one-person operation or an 100,000+ employee organization, everything can be scrutinized and put into a plan. If you have your strategies and tactics in the form of a company plan, you and your employees will be more likely to follow it. Saving on items such as electricity, supplies, perks and more can free up vital dollars for core elements like marketing and customer service. Too often companies cut from the largest budgets (like marketing) without realizing they are the most important budget.

2. Speaking of Marketing…

Marketing can be broken down into channels. And while cutting marketing as a whole might not be advantageous to you, cutting some channels may be. It’s time to look carefully at your ROI for each channel. Find out what’s working and what’s not. You may be able to get away with shifting money within your marketing mix to maximize channel productivity. If your website isn’t producing how you want it to, hire a copywriter to look over the copy and make suggestions. See what you can do to boost your search engine rankings.

3. Improve Customer Service

In an age where customer service is declining, now is the time to stand out by offering the best customer service you’ve ever offered. Get with your team. Discuss the situation. Tell them their jobs depend on it…they’ll get the hint. Treat your customers as if your livelihood depends on it - because it does.

As for me, I’m using the downturn to beef up my web presence, turn some of my attention overseas, and capitalize of my current pool of clients by offering them the best service I can. I’m also offering partner services, including bog management, graphic design, web design and PR services through professionals I’ve worked with in the past.

I was talking to a client/friend of mine the other day when she mentioned that the more she tries to learn things about marketing and ‘web tech stuff’, the more overwhelmed she gets.

She went on to differentiate between being an entrepreneur and being self-employed, placing herself in the self-employed category. And she makes a very good argument for the differentiation.

She points out that, as a self-employed person, she has little choice but to learn and do just about every component of her business since she (and quite frankly, many other self-employed people in America) doesn’t have enough money to pay others.

The catch-22, as she points out, is that she’s doing it all herself, which limits the time she has for other activities - including core business.

So the theory here is that if a business owner does all it takes to market, brand, write and promote their business, then they’re really in the marketing, branding, writing, and promotions business. Right?

As a freelance copywriter, I’m lucky (I think) in that much of the promoting I do for myself is based in, of course, copywriting. Whether I’m writing an email to prospective clients, or writing a blog post here for you to read, my core business matches well to my marketing and promotions.

But my friend isn’t so lucky. Don’t get me wrong, she’s great at what she does. I almost ventured into her industry after college, and it can be a very specialized and lucrative field. I think for my client, what would take her from ’self-employed’ to ‘entrepreneur’ is the one thing she mentioned early on - money. Money is the lifeblood of business. With money, you can hire someone to do your marketing, create your website and do all the things you don’t have the time to learn and do.

The point of all this? There is a difference between being an entrepreneur and being self-employed, but you’ll always be working for yourself.

For me, a new year brings renewed drive and determination to give my clients the best copywriting, marketing and public relations I can at affordable rates. And that also means attracting new clients to my websites and blogs to learn more about me. Which means adding content and making sure that content is relevant to prospects and search engines alike. I’m going to give a little bit of detail about my five website suggestions for 2008 below. If you want the in-depth version, you’ll have to tune into This Hour has 22 Widgets on Wednesday, December 20th at 10:00am Eastern Time. Let’s just say I have a lot to say, and typing it would take all day.

Here are my five favorite ways to make 2008 an even better year for your website:

1. Fix the ‘little’ things in your site. Did your site designer give your website title tags like this: “About Us”, “What we Do”, “Contact Us” and “Page 5.html”? If your pages have title tags that like those, it’s time to change them. Title tags play an important role in search engine rankings and in overall marketing. When (and if) a prospect sees a page in your site listed in a bunch of search engine results, do you think “What we Do” is going to entice them to click on the link your site? Titles should be no more than 70 characters long, including spaces and your keywords or key phrase should be as close to the start of the title as possible.

Also, do you have description copy for your website pages? This is another very important tool for your online marketing.

2. Plan an online PR campaign. Got company news that you want to get out to the world? While I never discount true, person-to-person PR practices, planning an online-only PR campaign can really boost your traffic and send you qualified leads. Google the term NC Based Copywriter and you’ll see some releases from me. While the releases are not part of my site, they each link to me or describe my news and services in some way. I suggest planning on two press releases per month depending on relevant company news you have available. Obviously if you don’t have relevant news, you won’t be putting out a press releases. As for distribution, tune in to the show and I’ll give you a bit more info about that.

3. Start a blog. This couldn’t be easier, yet it is STILL seen as a daunting task for many business owners. The first major question you need to ask is where you will host your blog. Your blog acts very much like a website. With WordPress blogging software (my particular choice for two of my blogs, including this one), you can choose to have WordPres host your blog (yourblog.wordpress.com) or you can host it with a separate hosting service (www.yourblog.com or www.yourwebsite.com/blog). The difference between the two is very important. WordPress does not allow commercial information to be posted on WordPress-hosted blogs. This is why I moved my blog to my domain: jasonpedey.com/blog. This is not hard to do. Again, the blog creates relevant links to your site and products and also provides an avenue for you to create relevant content both easily and often.

4. Podcast. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Stop the sucky podcasting. I’m serious. There are still PR firms out there who think it’s cool to sit an intern with a script across the table from a C-level executive with a script and let the two read to each other while the conversation is being recorded. I don’t know why this still happens. When you podcast with me, you get interaction. Sure I’ll send you an outline of the topics we’ll cover in a podcast, but no word-by-word soap opera scripts. When you podcast with me, listeners get information with an element of entertainment, interaction and excitement. And again, podcasts are a great way to add relevant content to your site while giving people an inside look at who your company is. It’s easy and affordable and the best part is that I do most of the work. I’m talking 95% of the wrok here. All you have to do is read the overview and dial a phone number.

5. Dream big. I know each of the above counts as one idea. One blog. One podcast. One Ppress release, etc. But, that’s how big, powerful sites with lots of content are born. Imagine blogging twice a week for a year. That’s over 100 pages of relevant content for your site. Then post some press releases, articles and podcasts to your site and you have the nutrients your site needs to grow.

All of my suggestions for 2008 are within your reach. I can even help you set them up and make them happen. Don’t let another year of wanting to blog, or wanting to podcast, or wanting to do a PR campaign pass you by. Now is the time.