Looking forward to BUZZ sessions. Have to think of my questions. I have just launched a new Business and IT consultancy website and would love feedback from the Buzz group as well as general advice. I worked at senior levels for 30 years almost and am ‘buzzing’ to make this work.
http://www.via.ie/news willing to work with anyone anywhere

Joe,

Congratulations on the website launch. The site looks good. Love the let’s have a coffee approach. Be happy to give you more detailed feedback … please post your questions here as you’ll get the benefit of others being able share their thoughts as well. Look forward to it.

*Note to all readers: We’ve received a couple of emails from our readers and I guess we caught some of you a bit off guard as it sounds like many people need time to think about questions.

Not a problem. But I do encourage you to ask anything on your mind on the topic of Online Promotion and Internet Marketing. We’ll keep this open for a while, but the sooner you get your questions out there the more chance for feedback you’ll receive.

Have been consulting full time for almost 9 years but marketing is my weakest link. I need help in this area (any assistance would be appreciated) and does the online advertising like Google AdWord really work? Can anyone confirm that they actually got business this way? Can you point me to marketing methods that work in this economy?
Thanks

Hi Wayne: You’ve taken the right first step by putting your situation out there and asking for feedback and thoughts. That takes courage.

I see you’re in the manufacturing space. One of the greatest challenges those in technical fields have is understanding that even if they have a what they believe to be a ‘great’ product – that doesn’t in itself translate into sales. I’m guessing this is where your business comes in…helping technical guys and gals sell more of their products and improve the efficiency and speed of operations.

Listing your accomplishments as you’ve done on your website is great. You should also consider adding testimonials to your site from satisfied clients … if you haven’t done so already (I just took a quick glance through).

More importantly though, and the key to marketing your consulting business is to clearly develop your USP (unique selling proposition). What’s your advantage? Why should someone do business with you and not your competitors? These are the kinds of questions you need to answer in your USP.

If your background stands out, use that as your advantage. Maybe you have a story of how you helped a past client that is so powerful it will set you apart, use that. Or, an often overlooked area is simply crafting your offer to stand out…

Do you offer a guarantee for your services? Can you increase your clients’ ROI by a minimum % or their money back. Or maybe increase their efficiency, etc. Whatever your guarantee is, if your competition isn’t offering one, you’ll stand out and clients will come calling. Of course you need to give them ample reason to believe that you an fulfill your promise.

Now package all of that stuff together and start getting in front of potential customers. Create a 3-5 step direct mail campaign with letters, email and calls. Choose your top 100 dream clients and get in front of them. Keep pushing and working that list and you’ll see great results – and yes, even in this economy. (Disclaimer: I’m not making any promises here, but this stuff does work).

Now, as for your question on Google Adwords. Yes, it works like a charm. HOWEVER, too many people think they just turn a campaign on and the leads will come. Nope, sorry, doesn’t work that way. Adwords is like anything, to do it well it takes lots and lots of time. But the payback can be huge.

Perry Marshall is that master of Adwords. He has a free 5 day email course that will teach you more than most people know. Plus he has great products when you’re ready to take the next step. Many people doubt people like Perry and others talking about Adwords. There’s a lot of garbage and fake ‘gurus’ out there so I can understand why. But again, if you’re committed to learning and working hard, you can make the stuff Perry teaches really work. For more info on that 5 day free Adwords course.

Does that help with some ideas?

Hi there!

Need your advice on how to improve number of hits on my (future) website. Probably a good time to ask as I am currently working on it so there is time to put things right from the very beginning. I am trying to set-up a business development consultancy in Serbia.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Nebojsa

Hi there Nebojsa,

Thanks for taking part in our first buzz session and I’d love to try and help you with your question.

First of all to get more “hits” or web traffic you should really need to have at least a basic understanding of SEO.

This means understanding and applying concepts like researching and using a specific set of keywords, the importance of building backlinks around the internet and how to get those links, and also how you can optimize (set up) each of your pages so that search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo notice your website.

The first thing I recommend if you haven’t already is to download the free copy of the SEO for Consultants guide we put out a few months back as part of the consultants toolkit. Here is the link: http://www.consulting-business.com/free-seo-guide-for-consultants.html

If you go through that SEO for Consultants guide you will know more then 90% of people online about how to get more traffic and hits to your website.

So start off by reading and then applying the concepts laid out in that guide and you’ll see great results after some time.

The key thing with getting organic or free traffic to your website is it takes time. SEO really works well but you need to have patience and continuously work hard on getting links to your website and more and more content.

Hope that helps you a bit Nebojsa,

Sam Zipursky
Business Consulting Buzz