<![CDATA[LIZ LANCASHIRE - Blog]]>Mon, 06 Apr 2020 00:24:18 +0100Weebly<![CDATA[Marketing for start-ups]]>Wed, 28 Feb 2018 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.lizlancashire.com/blog/marketing-for-start-upsYou're just starting out. You have big plans for your new company. You know you can take over the world but you just need people to take notice. They’ll soon see the value of your product/service. But the thing is…budget. You don’t have one. What’s a future Peter Jones to do? (Which doesn’t mean mass humiliation on Dragons’ Den?)

Here's my top tips for marketing on a budget.
Social media is your friend – it’s free, and it’s word of mouth on a mass scale. If you don’t have the means to outsource to a social media specialist, you can manage it yourself. Just remember to keep the content relevant, regular, useful, on brand, and engaging. It can also be a useful source of information if you follow accounts relevant to you, so make sure you actually read content too.

Social and Google ads – while not the biggest fan of advertising, it certainly has its place. And online ads can be both affordable and effective. Your audience can be highly targeted and you can start your ad campaign for pennies. It’s a good way to test the water, and if the ads are driving results, up your budget accordingly.

​Data – cherish your data. It’s valuable. Look after it, don’t share it, and treat people’s personal details with respect. Contact your contacts but don’t bombard them. Always think –what’s in it for them, why do they want to receive this newsletter when I sent them one last week?

Be where your customers are – do they love shopping on Saturdays? Are they regular golfers? Down the gym, the local art gallery? Know your customer and be visible. That could be sponsorship of an event in the local shopping centre, or sponsoring the 18th hole in a golf tournament. Digital ads on the screens in the gym, or an ad on the art gallery website. None of these strategies have to cost a fortune and can be cost effective if you’ve profiled your customer correctly.

Get your website up-to-date – it may seem obvious but many people neglect their website, meaning prospective visitors are put off or presume the business has gone kaput. The purpose of your marketing efforts is to drive traffic to your website so ensure that it reflects who you are and what you do. It needs to be informative, accurate, succinct, and include a strong call to action.
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Having the budget to allow specialists to manage your marketing, advertising and web design is all very well. In an ideal world. Until you get there, boot-strap and put your marketing head on. The key is to do what you can yourself but know when to call in the experts.
]]><![CDATA[Five reasons to outsource your marketing]]>Tue, 30 Jan 2018 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.lizlancashire.com/blog/five-reasons-to-outsource-your-marketingNew year, new start. It’s that time of year when we’re starting diets, spring cleaning, trying to get on board with our new year’s resolutions, and generally starting afresh. Clearing out the cupboards and the recesses of our minds to march into 2018 with new resolve and clean slates. It feels good, doesn’t it? But do you apply that thinking to your business? If you’ve considered upping your marketing and outsourcing, but you’re not sure about the benefits, consider these five reasons to go for it:
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    1. Expert advice, just when you need it. Using a freelance consultant means you have access to expert advice whenever you need it.  Advice from people that have seen it before, have solutions to your problems, have many years of experience, and have built a network of experts around them that you can tap into.
    2. A fresh set of eyes. You could employ a marketing bod to work in your business full-time and to be honest, that’s not a bad thing. Marketing is a full-time job. But for fresh ideas, inspiration, an extra pair of hands, high-level advice, keeping up with legislation, specialist help with a particular area (such as communications), there’s no debate that a freelancer is your answer.
    3. An resource that can grow as you grow. An employee is a commitment. If you want to keep costs down to begin with and see how things pan out, start with a small contract with an freelance consultant. As business and confidence grows, a consultant can provide you with more help at the same rate as you grow. It’s much more flexible and less risky than committing to an employee.
    4. Set defined goals that are achievable. Any consultant worth their salt will start by setting agreed goals with you, that are achievable and measurable. So, it’s easy to see if your efforts and money are working for you. And if it’s not providing the right results, you can tweak and make changes easily.
    5. Save money. How else can you get marketing expertise, on-hand whenever you need it, for the price of one part-time employee? Using a consulantant means never having to worry about absences, added costs, and paying an employee to sit through quiet trading periods.
    Many-a-time I've heard people say they’ll hire an apprentice or an intern, or get a junior member of staff to look after their social media, company newsletter, or website. But do they understand their audience, the importance of quality content, the image and positioning of your business? Don’t entrust the face of your business to anyone but experts. And if you want to chat about how I can help, drop me a line here.
    ]]>    <![CDATA[The well overdue end of Like and Share updates]]>Wed, 20 Dec 2017 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.lizlancashire.com/blog/the-well-overdue-end-of-like-and-share-updates​Facebook has been making a few changes lately and all for the better. It has introduced a snooze button, so you can mute people, pages or groups for 30 days which means you can hide all the ‘xx sleeps ‘til Christmas’ updates. Good enough reason alone, I’d say. It has also scrapped the stalker feed on the right-hand side which told you what posts your friends were liking and commenting on, in real time. This means you’ve no choice but to stop stalking your ex-boyfriend. But stop it anyway! It’s not good for your health. And we know this to be true because Facebook did the research. Their own research found that spending too much time browsing Facebook is bad for your mental wellbeing. 
    It’s not about the amount of time spent on there, it’s the browsing, comparing and staking that’s bad for you. Spend time on there and interact with people, and that’s good for you. Apparently. (We’ve mentioned it before but over the holidays can be a good time to take a break from social media completely. Here’s a handy website full of helpful information to help you do that https://www.itstimetologoff.com/).

    ​But the best, the absolute best change with no shadow of a doubt that Facebook has just made, is to crack down on the Like and Share, or ‘Engagement Bait’ updates. You know, the ‘Like if you’re a stressed-out mummy’ or ‘Share this update to win a bread maker/holiday/telly’. Totally over the moon about that. They are so flipping irksome it makes me want to us want to go all out and SIGN OUT.

    A brand page asking its followers to Like and/or Share one of their updates or photos in order to win something has long been against Facebook’s rules but has been flouted since forever by all and sundry.

    Facebook posted in its newsroom on December 18th, “’engagement bait’, seeks to take advantage of our News Feed algorithm by boosting engagement in order to get greater reach. So, starting this week, we will begin demoting individual posts from people and Pages that use engagement bait.”

    At best it’s annoying for the friends of the brand’s followers who have to put up with these posts appearing in their feed. At worst it’s the laziest form of promotion and if a consultant recommends this tactic then approach with caution. They should know the basics of Facebook’s rules if they’re advising others on it and doing this can get your brand page a big black mark on Facebook.

    Over time Facebook has made it harder for brands to reach people organically through valuable, shareable content, which has made more brands resort to the Like and Share tactic. Now that they’re finally cracking down on it, it will push more brands towards Facebook advertising, but at least that is targeted to potentially interested folk.

    There is no better tactic on social media, and SEO for that matter, than organic, interesting, shareable content, and Facebook’s move this week underpins one of my favourite mantras – ‘Content is King’.
    ]]>    <![CDATA[Discombobulated by words]]>Fri, 24 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.lizlancashire.com/blog/discombobulated-by-wordsTo be honest, I just wanted to find an excuse to use the word discombobulate. It’s great, isn’t it? But not one we use every day, so just to be clear, it means to confuse, befuddle, or perplex. I’ve decided it’s being added to my daily vocab from now on. Thinking about a confusing word that means to confuse got me thinking about other confusing words, naturally, and just how many examples of similar words there are in the English language that are often confused.
    ​An example of this is macaron and macaroon, and how the two words are used interchangeably but mean two quite different things. The first being a very sweet, brightly coloured almond meringue type biscuit, and the second being an eggy, coconutty cakey thing which for me are synonymous with Christmas markets and are totally heavenly. See also, pacific and specific, affect and effect, desert and dessert, passed and past and stationary and stationery, amongst many others.

    Affect /effect I find hard to explain. I know when the right word should be used but couldn’t explain the theory to a non-native English speaker. Desert/dessert is one we see so often. It is an easy mistake to make but being given a desert menu in a restaurant really isn’t all that appealing. And I have to think twice when I need to explain that something isn’t moving. Is it stationary or stationery? I’ve learnt that the way to remember the difference is to think of a stationer’s shop. That’s where you buy stationery, therefore I need the word stationary.

    The problem and the beauty of the English language is that is it a complete mish-mash of other languages. We adopt words from other languages and adapt them for our use. It makes the language rich and varied but it means that what you think might be the root of a word just isn’t, the rules of verb tenses are often broken, and there are many words that sound the same or are spelt the same but have different meanings. Phew. It’s enough to make anyone give up and learn Klingon instead.
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    What are your thoughts on confusing words? Does the English language have more than its fair share? And are there any mix-ups that really get your goat? And what have goats got to do with anything? They’re probably as discombobulated as us.
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