What you really want to know is whether you should hire us.

Are we the right fit?

Or could hiring us turn out to be an even bigger mistake than the eighth Fast and the Furious movie? I mean seriously, how many do we need?

Doing business with someone, especially long-term, is a commitment. It’s a bit like any relationship–there has to be respect, honesty and good communication. We have to be on the same page. Otherwise, it ends up stressful, time-consuming, and could potentially end up in a divorce. Not a happy ending for anyone.

So in this blog post, I’m going to go through the reasons why you shouldn’t hire us, so you can establish whether we’re the right fit for you and your business.

And don’t worry, it’s not full of bullshit reverse-psychology reasons like, ‘you shouldn’t work with us if you DON’T want your business to succeed.’ 🙄

So who shouldn’t hire us for our content writing services?

Let’s take a look. 👀

1. There are lots of people involved in approving everything

We happily work with marketing teams, but we only communicate with one person within that team, particularly when it comes to feedback.

We’ve been in situations before where feedback has come from different team members.

Sometimes it’s been contradictory, where one person has loved something we’ve done and another has been unsure, meaning we have to clarify which person’s feedback we prioritise. And as you can imagine it all gets a bit…messy. 😬

The best thing to do is for our contact to collate any feedback and give us everything in one go (and they’ll be able to spot if there are any opposing views). If this isn’t possible, we’re not right for you.

2. You don’t have any time to give feedback on the writing

The aim of our SEO content writing service is to save you time. In fact, we save you up to 10+ hours per week by offering a full blog management service, i.e. doing everything from keyword research to hitting the publish button–and all the tasks in between.

But we still need a teensy-weensy bit of your time. And that’s to either:

• Approve each blog post
• Give any feedback

On average, our clients spend 15-30 minutes giving feedback and approving each blog post.

So if you picked our Gold package (which comes with 3 blog posts a month), you’d have to dedicate 45-90 minutes per month to giving us feedback and approval.

Often this time gets less and less as the project goes on, e.g. there’s more feedback on the first blog post than the fourth!

I don’t think it’s an excessive amount of time, but if you can’t do that, we’re not right for you.

3. You want a yes man/woman

At the start of each project, we create a content plan. We create this plan based on our in-depth kick-off call with you (where we find out all about your business), and our keyword research and competitor research.

In this content plan, we’ll suggest three months of blog content–which includes draft titles and a bit about what we should include within each blog post.

Not one single client has asked to change any blog content ideas we’ve come up with–which they’re more than welcome to do, by the way!

But we get why.

We put so much upfront work into the content plan, and because of this, our clients understand how our proposed content ideas will help them achieve their business goals. We even record a video to go through the content plan and explain why we’ve proposed each idea.

As you can see, we don’t just ‘write the content’, we’ll tell you what we need to write too. We do this, not because we’re ego-maniacs, but because doing tons of research tells us the best content ideas to go after.

So if you’re the kind of business who wants a yes-man/woman to tell us what to write and when to write it, we’re simply not the right fit for you.

4. You’re not exactly sure what you’re selling right now

You might be clear on your products or services, but maybe you’re not clear on exactly how you’re selling them or in what way.

For example, if you’re a website design agency, you know you’re selling website design (at least, we hope so 😂). But maybe you’re not sure whether to offer a ‘website in a week’ service or do a truly bespoke service for every client?

If these are decisions you’re still thinking about, then we might not be the right fit, right now.

We create content with the ultimate aim of getting you more sales, so we need to position you correctly through your content.

For example, the way we’d talk about a ‘website in a week’ service is completely different to how we’d talk about a bespoke service for each client.

But once you’ve figured all that out, come back to us. 😉

And if you need help with that, check out Janine Coombes who specialises in helping business owners package up their services!

5. You’re not sure who your audience is

If you’re thinking to yourself: should I pick a niche or not? Or even ‘What are you talking about? I sell to anyone and everyone!’ then we might not be the right fit for you.

If you don’t understand your audience and their problems, it’s difficult to create content for them.

Because everything starts with your customers–their goals, problems, values, the language they use etc. This will help inform our keyword research and come up with your content strategy.

It also helps inform our tone of voice. We would write differently for an audience of plucky microbusinesses and freelancers than corporate HR professionals.

If you’re still struggling to find your niche, definitely check out niching expert Amy Caiger! Amy can help you understand how to hone in on who your audience is!

6. You want us to pitch for work

We sound a little egotistical here and we really don’t mean to. But we don’t pitch for work. The reason we don’t pitch is simple: pitching isn’t the best way to find the right content writing agency.

Why? Well, there are three main reasons:

• It relies on you having already diagnosed your problem

You don’t go to the doctor having done your own diagnosis. Well, I’m sure some people do! Doctors need to do their own investigation to diagnose a problem and prescribe medication or further help.

It’s the same with your business.

You need an expert to diagnose any problems and tell you what you can do to fix them.

• Pitching is all about turning on the charm (and quite frankly, we’re not all that charming. But we are good at what we do 😉)

We’re just not ‘charm the pants off you’ kinda people. And we certainly don’t want to peacock our way to your money by being all ‘look at how good we are’.

It’s not us. And it’s not right for you either. You need a company that asks YOU a lot of questions. That listens to you. That gets to understand you and what you need. Not the other way around.

That’s the only way for us to create good content that will deliver rankings and sales.

• Just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it’s good

Pitching can sometimes feel like a race to the bottom, where everyone competes by giving all their ideas and strategies away for free.

But ideas are cheap.

We can only create a good content strategy by delving deep into your business, understanding who you are and conducting our own research like keyword research and competitor analysis.

To do that takes a huge amount of time. And it’s not something we can cobble together quickly for a pitch. If we did, we’d be doing you a huge disservice.

So those are our three main reasons why we don’t pitch! And, if you like, you can learn more about why we don’t pitch for projects.

7. Your website needs A LOT of work

Our service gets you higher search engine rankings and website traffic (nice), but if your website looks like a dog’s dinner, it’s pretty pointless bringing more people around to see it. They won’t be impressed, we’ll tell you that much.

Now, don’t get us wrong, even when we were website designers we’d always say: don’t spend thousands on a website until it makes business and financial sense!

You do not have to have a fancy-pants website to make content work, but it does need to be:

• Professional looking i.e. doesn’t look like it was designed in 1992
• Mobile friendly – because 50% of searches take place over mobile now
• Relatively fast – because people won’t wait around for it to load
• Be clear about what you offer – and have a good user experience where people can find what they are looking for.

And that’s it. But if it doesn’t do those things, you may want to look at improving your website first (or getting it redesigned).

Side note, it’s helpful if you have access to your full website. Some website design agencies like to control access or gate certain areas so clients ‘don’t break anything’ (newsflash, that’s why you have backups).

If you don’t have access, you may have to send content to your website design agency to upload for you, which adds time and money to the process! Our advice: get access! No company should be prevented from accessing something as important as their website! 

8. You want a cheap service

Honestly? There are writers that charge $20 for a blog article out there (if you look at places like Fiverr). And we’re a teensy bit more than that (our content writing packages start from £1397 per month).

When we work with clients, the actual writing takes up around 40% of the actual time it takes to press publish on a blog post. The rest of that time is taken up with:

• Keyword research
• Coming up with a content strategy
• Uploading the content–formatting it and optimising it for search engines
• Creating imagery (such as the featured image or images within the blog post)
• Adding and optimising images and GIFs
• Fixing small technical issues
• Tracking rankings

It’s a full blog management service, where you can ‘outsource your entire blog’ to us. We can do this because we’re experts in content writing, but also SEO, website design and content design too.

Unfortunately, all that ain’t cheap. If you want to learn more about it, check out our blog post: why are we so expensive?

9. You want free samples

We won’t work for you for free. Ever. No, not even if you’re Hopper from Stranger Things (he’s my favourite). But not even then will we work for free.

Of course, you’ll want to see samples of our writing. That’s fair. And if you contact us directly we can send some samples to you. But we don’t do any kind of free sample.

10. You just need one blog post

It baffles us when we get this request, because, in all honesty, you’re unlikely to see a massive difference to your bottom line thanks to one blog post.

Of course, we’ve had single blog posts that have performed AMAZINGLY well for us and our clients. BUT that was because we had a content strategy in place based on our research.

You can see results from just one blog post such as an increase in traffic, rankings and even leads. But to see results that impact your sales in the long-term, that only comes from consistent blogging.

11. You want to write about your awards

If you can honestly say that you’ve had a genuine customer or client contact you and say, ‘what awards have you won?’ then we will happily write about your awards. Until then, no. 😂

Think we’re a match made in heaven?

So, you’ve read through this and you’re thinking, ‘do you know what, Jammy? You’re my kinda people!’

Firstly, yay. We may be a bit fussy about who we work with, but that’s because we love the relationships we build with our clients. It’s better for everyone if we’re the right fit.

Secondly, visit here if you’d like to know more about our SEO content writing service. Or book a 15-minute chat with us to ask us any questions.

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post 11 Reasons our SEO content writing service is not right for you appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

So what do you do? You ask some companies you like to pitch their services.

They show up, suited and booted, ready to impress.

There’s a fancy powerpoint. Visual aids.

And you analyse which company you like best.

It’s a process that happens every day all across the world.

And in this blog post, we’re going to tell you why it’s deeply flawed.

We’ll tell you why we don’t pitch for work. And what we do instead.

First Things First: This Is Not About Our Ego

When we say the words, ‘Thank you so much for asking us to pitch for this project. It means a lot that you approached us. However, we don’t actually pitch for work…’ Well, we understand that we come across as a little, how shall we put it? Egotistical.

We’d  like to say that this does not come from our ego. We don’t think we’re better than other companies.

We don’t hold our noses in the air, saying ‘Eugh, pitching. That is SO beneath us.’

The reason that we don’t pitch for work is because pitching is not the best thing for us. But more importantly, it’s not the best thing for you.

Getting companies to pitch to you is not the best way for you to find the right company for your business and what you need.

Why? Well, we’re going to run through the reasons why we don’t pitch. And why you should consider another process when hiring companies to work with.

A Pitch is Based on Your Brief…But Your Brief Needs Discussion

When you see a doctor, you give them a list of symptoms and rely on them to diagnose what’s wrong with you.

When you see a mechanic about a fault on your car, you tell them the problems, and they find out what’s wrong with it.

But when you give an agency your ‘brief’, you’ve already diagnosed your own problems. And you’ve already come up with a solution.

A perfect example of this is with Search Engine Optimisation. A lot of companies want an SEO company to help them get more traffic and search rankings. When actually, before they do anything, they need to improve their website’s user-experience. There’s no point paying to get loads of website traffic, if people don’t know where to go when they land on your site.

The Website Success Framework

If you need help with getting more leads and sales from your website, there are six key areas you need to focus on.

We’ve seen companies spend tens of thousands on a website redesign, when actually, they needed to invest in content marketing and lead generation.

We’ve seen companies invest in website copy, but the design is so poor they don’t come across as trustworthy.

You need to hit all six to have a successful website. Often, businesses will struggle in two or three of these key areas. That’s what a good company should help diagnose…way before you get to writing a brief.

What We Do Instead

Instead of pitching something based on your brief (and based on you diagnosing your own problems). We have a conversation with you about your problems. We then come up with some ideas about how you would best address those problems. And we do this in an unbiased way. Sometimes, we can help. Sometimes, another company is a better fit for what you need. Either way, you have a full understanding of what you need and your next steps.

2. Pitching is About Us Charming You

But it’s not about us. At least, it shouldn’t be.

When a company pitches to you, it’s all about them. It’s all about their experience, their team, their past projects, and their ideas.

They want to dazzle you, charm you and convince you that they are the company for you. They present a slick powerpoint and showcase their many awards. But is this really the best way for you to identify whether this company is right for your business?

We don’t think so.

Because when you come to choose a company, you need the focus to be on you–on your business and what you want to achieve. You need a company that asks you questions (not the other way around). Essentially, you need to be in the spotlight. Only then, can that company truly help you.

What We Do Instead

We want to work with companies who are the right fit. We want to actually help companies, and deliver a good return on investment (because, let’s face it, no one want’s unhappy clients, right?)

To do that, we can’t just present to everyone, showing off our skills and expertise. Because we still don’t know if we’re the right fit for each other.

We simply need a conversation (yup, there’s that word again). By having a conversation, both parties can find out if we’re a good fit. And we can identify if we can help you. Or if not, we can point you in the right direction.

3. The Free ‘Stuff’ Isn’t Always Helpful

A common request we get asked of us, is to come up with lots of ideas in our pitch. Or even designs or full marketing/SEO reports.

Now, we’re not blaming you for thinking this is the norm because…well, it is. A lot of companies do this. They pour hours and hours of their time coming up with ideas/reports/creating designs, and all sorts of things for a pitch.

We Always Say No to the Request for Freebies…Here’s Why

Firstly, we can’t create designs or full marketing reports without having a full understanding of your business.

That means understanding the problems you’re facing, your staff and capabilities, your competitors, and what you want to achieve. We need to spend a lot of time analysing your website, analytics, search rankings, content marketing and website copy. This process is actually part of the paid project–the initial strategy. It usually takes two-three weeks, and it’s pretty intensive.

But we could easily knock up a design.

We could download some SEO reports using some software.

But here’s the snag. It may not be helpful to you.

Why? Because we haven’t done all the things above. We haven’t done a deep-dive of your company. So the design we come up with would definitely change later down the line. Those SEO stats could be pointless without us doing some intensive research into what your audience is searching for and how we can capture them.

Essentially, the free stuff you often get in pitches may not have any reflection on the end service/product.

The second reason is slightly more controversial.

Some companies do put hours, days or even weeks into your pitch. They spend a lot of time coming up with ideas, designs and/or reports. And they do all of this for free.

We don’t do this because we don’t believe any business should give so much of their time away for free. If we did, we’d have less time to spend with our current clients, and it would impact our business negatively.

Essentially, we prioritise our current clients over winning new ones. We prioritise serving those who pay us, rather than serving those who may (or may not) pay us.

What We Do Instead

Now, saying all that, it doesn’t mean we don’t want to speak to you at all! As we’ve said before, what we do is have a conversation with you. We’ll ask you a lot of questions (and you can ask us questions too), and we’ll give you our unbiased advice and guidance about the best way forward.

Still Nervous?

For many businesses, pitching is still the norm. It’s the way you can see what a company actually can do. It makes you feel safe and secure. You’re investing money and you want to spend it wisely. But pitching is not the best way to find the right company for you.

If we’ve sent this blog post to you’ve requested us to pitch, we hope we can have a conversation and learn more about you and your business. The focus should be on you, after all 😉

We’ll assess whether we’re the right company for you and if we are, we’ll put together a proposal. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll give you some recommendations on which path to take, and which companies could help you.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post Why We Don’t Pitch For Projects (And What We Do Instead) appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

1. You don’t know anything about the clients you are attracting

One of the major issues with relying on referrals to build and grow your business is that you don’t know much about your prospective customers or clients.

We like to use a blind date analogy when explaining this. Picture this situation – your mum sets you up on a blind date with someone. Of course, you have no idea who they are. The date might work out, and that person might be just perfect for you. Or they might not! And your blind date might turn into an experience you’d rather forget. But that’s the point – you just don’t know, do you?!

In a way, business referrals aren’t that different. Your existing customers and clients may have recommended you to their friends or colleagues, but you don’t know anything about them. And they might be a perfect fit for your business. Or they might not. And if they aren’t, you might both run into problems when you start working together. That’s not ideal, is it?

2. Your prospective clients don’t know anything about your business

When someone recommends you to a prospective customer or client, you don’t know anything about them, but they don’t know anything about you either. Sure, you came recommended, but they’re not aware of the way you work or don’t know what to expect from you.

By the time you’ve explained it all, they might realise you don’t offer the right service for them. Or they might not be willing to pay your fees. And what happens then? You don’t know how your prospective customers or clients are going to react when they find out all the details. And again, it might work out (and the referral might pay off), or it might not (and you might end up in an awkward situation!).

3. Your business cannot grow 

Before 2017, our business was relying solely on referrals. Money was coming in, and month-on-month our business wasn’t getting worse. But it wasn’t growing either. It was stagnant. We were offering the same services at the same prices.

Truth is, we had no idea where our next client might be coming from. We had no leads in our pipeline and had our referrals dried up, we would have been in trouble with no other prospective clients to contact.

Looking back, the reason is obvious. We were getting little traffic to our website, and we weren’t building our email list! We had no active way of increasing our leads or sales, and that’s because we weren’t in control of our own sales process. Plus, seeing that our previous or existing clients were kindly referring us to others, we couldn’t easily increase our prices either, as we felt obliged to offer the same prices to our newest clients.

In a nutshell, we weren’t building our personal brand, and our business wasn’t growing.

How to use content marketing to grow your business

If all this sounds familiar, what can you do to attract the right customers or clients, build a pipeline of leads, and increase sales to grow your business?

You can start content marketing.

In 2017, we made the life-changing decision to start blogging on our website. Before then, we had published little content and hardly had a presence on social media. And while referrals were great, things didn’t always work out. So to change all this, we started writing and sharing regular content on our website.

1. Use your content to attract the right customers

We started off by answering questions from our prospective or existing clients, who’d want to know how much we charged or how we worked, for example. And as a result, we created posts including:

• Why are we so expensive?
• Why are we so cheap?
• How long will it take to build your website?
• 10 Reasons We’re Not the Right Fit for You.

And many more!

Over time, writing and sharing blog posts regularly meant that we were able to build a library of content on our website that allows our prospective clients to find all the information they need to decide whether or not we’re the right fit for them.

The people who do get in touch with us tend to have read our content beforehand. And more often than not, they’ve already made a decision to work with us based on what they’ve learnt on our website.

2. Use content to create a pipeline of leads

Content marketing also allowed us to grow our business by attracting more traffic to our website. This, in turn, meant we could increase our email list. And over time, we created an engaged community of subscribers and a pipeline of leads that we could tap into when we had something to sell.

3. Use content to increase your prices or pivot 

Sharing content was also key to pivoting our business. By investing in our email list, we were able to build a base of people who already knew us, either through working with us or through our content. They had trust in us – they liked working with us – and they were ready to buy any other products or services we might offer.

Content is what allowed us to introduce our membership in 2018. Make Your Mark Online is aimed at people who want to build their website but are struggling to drive sales through it. And the reason we were able to successfully launch our membership is that we had worked on building a strong community – mainly through content.

So if you want your business to look any different in 6-12 months’ time, you need a pipeline of leads who are invested in you, know that you know what you’re talking about, and who trust you. And the best way to do that is to share content regularly and become an authority and a leader in your industry.

4. Share content with your referrals

So can content help with referrals too? It certainly can. Whenever someone recommends us to a new prospective client, we send them 3-4 key pieces of content to read. Once they’ve gone through our blog posts, we jump on a call with them to answer any questions they might have and find out more about their business and the project.

We often share our Website Buyer’s Guide too, which is an unbiased piece of content that teaches people how to buy a website. This gives them an opportunity to learn more about us and how we work and decide whether they feel we’re the right fit for them. By the time we speak to people on the phone or via video, they are already committed! There are no surprises about prices or processes. And often this means they’ll become our clients. Hurray!

So when a referral comes through your business, rather than diving into the working relationship straight away, invite them to read your content. You don’t need to turn referrals down. But do use your content to educate and inform people about the way you work. And if they like it, they’ll come to you.

Would you like some help with planning your content? 

So there you have it – the reasons why referrals aren’t always ideal for your business and how you can use content to attract the right customers or clients. You can think of referrals as an added bonus for your business. But they shouldn’t be your lifeline.

As you can see, content marketing can help you grow your business in a different way. So if you want to know more about planning the type of content that will help people make informed decisions about working with you before even getting in touch, we’ve created a content marketing planner that does just that. Our 90-day challenge workbook helps you create the type of content you should be producing in order to educate and inform your prospective clients and to increase leads and sales in your business.

Some of our lovely Make Your Mark Online (or MYMO) members are already using the workbook to produce weekly content for our 90-day challenge. The idea is simple – you create one piece of content every week for 90 days, and we provide personalised feedback to you, so you can improve your content and use it to attract better clients into your business.

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, head over to Make Your Mark Online to find out more. Our first 90-day challenge has already started, but if you missed it, don’t worry. We’re running two more this year, so you can join us for the next one, starting in May 2020. Just head over to Make Your Mark Online or give us a shout if you have any questions.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post Why referrals are bad for business (and what you should do instead) appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

But how do you get more people to visit your website? In this post, we share how we increased our website traffic by 10 times in 12 months in 2017 and give you some tips to help you do the same.

Using your website to sell

Before 2017, we used to get approximately 250-300 visitors to our website per month. At the time, our business was going well – we were getting plenty of referrals from our existing and previous clients, and we had enough projects to pay the bills. But while we were busy working on our clients’ websites, we were neglecting our own.

We might be professional web designers, but we were suffering from what we call ‘website shame’. Just like a lot of our clients do before they start working with us, we were using our website like an online business card – a glorified billboard for our business that we’d send people to when they wanted to get in touch with us.

But that’s now how you should use your website! Your website should act as an ‘unpaid salesperson’ for your business – it should help you generate leads and sales. Sell your products or services.

Also, because we weren’t creating any blog content for our website, we didn’t have anything to share on social media or with our email list. And as a result, we weren’t building our brand, and our business was growing excruciatingly slowly.

But in 2017, we started producing regular content for our website, and everything changed.

Publishing regular content on your website

Fast-forward to 2018, and we were regularly getting 2,500-3,000 visits to our website per month. Considering there’s a lot of competition in our market, those stats aren’t bad for a web design agency. But what’s key is that we increased our website traffic by 10 times compared to where we were a year earlier. And that’s something!

So what did we do differently?

At the start of 2017, we joined a 90-day content marketing challenge with a group of like-minded business owners through the former Content Marketing Academy (CMA) led by Chris Marr. By signing up for the challenge, we made a decision and a commitment to create a new piece of blog content every week and to practise what we preached.

We started using our website to:

• Build a personal brand.
• Get more traffic.
• Drive more enquiries.
• Make more sales.

But how did we do it? And how can you commit to creating regular content on your website?

1. Measure your benchmark

Do you know how much traffic you’re currently getting on your website every month? In our experience, most website owners don’t. So if you haven’t already, use your Google Analytics to find out.

2. Use your time efficiently

Prior to 2017, we had probably published 2 or 3 blog posts in a year. We used the excuse that we were too busy with client work to find the time to write. If you don’t make time to market your business, your business will stay still. And maybe that’s okay for now, but what about in 6 months or a year?

As a result of publishing regular content, we got more work. But more importantly, we attracted clients that were better suited to our business and who paid more. We did this and still found time to write weekly. This just goes to show that if you put your mind to it and prioritise working on your own business and website, you can make it happen. All we needed to do was to plan ahead and be more efficient with our time.

So what can you do to make better use of your time? Could you set aside a couple of hours a week to create content? Could you maybe take yourself out for half a day every fortnight to work on your website? What worked for us was planning out our content in advance, that way, we knew exactly what to write. We did this using a content planner, that we’re now giving away free to you. Just click to download below!

3. Create accountability

What worked really well for us was taking part in a content creation challenge with other business owners. This gave us the motivation and accountability we needed to keep going when the going got tough and always meet our deadlines. It wasn’t always easy, and it involved a lot of last-minute work on a Sunday night. But we had a group of people supporting us and cheering us on. And that made all the difference in helping us meet our deadlines.

Plus, we got feedback too, and this helped us get better and faster at producing content.

4. Answer your clients’ questions

During the 90-day challenge, we followed the principles from the book They Ask You Answer, by Marcus Sheridan. We learnt that when people are thinking about buying from you, they’ll do their own research first. And typically, they’ll look for information around price, read reviews and comparisons, etc.

Just ask yourself, what did you do the last time you made a purchase? Before you bought the product/service? Research, right? We can’t even buy a toaster without researching!

Using Marcus Sheridan’s method, we came up with a huge number of ideas. We wrote blog posts around our prices, we created industry-related comparisons and reviews, and we generally tried to answer any question our existing or prospective clients would ask us. Essentially, our content was a customer service tool.

Some of the blog posts we wrote back in 2017 still attract the largest number of visitors to our website. To give you an idea, here are some examples of content we wrote in answer to our clients’ questions:

• 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Work With Us
• How to take payments online for services. PayPal vs Stripe vs SamCart vs GoCardless
• Top 10 Best Web Design Agencies in Manchester 

The last blog post, for example, is one of the many posts that has attracted paying clients into our business. So creating content that answers people’s questions isn’t only great for increasing traffic, it should be used to deliver leads and sales too.

If you want to start publishing regular content, record all the questions that your clients ask you. Whether it’s over the phone, on email, during a face-to-face conversation, a coaching call or a consultation, make a note of them. If one client (existing or prospective) asks you something, chances are that others will do too. And if you’re just starting out and don’t have many clients yet, Facebook groups and conversations on social media can be a great place to start to find ideas.

To help you plan all this content, you can download the content matrix, which is the exact framework we use to plan our content for the entire year.

5. Optimise your content for search

Once we gathered ideas for content from our clients, we then used keyword research tools to articulate those questions in a way that would help our ideal clients find our content on Google. ‘Optimising your content for search’ effectively means using words and phrases that people will use when searching for your business or for related information online.

So use keyword research tools to make intelligent decisions about the titles and the sub-headings you use in your blog posts. And once you’ve identified the relevant keywords, make sure you include them in:

• Title tags.
• Meta descriptions.
• Image names.
• And the Alt text on your images.

If you want to find out more about how to do this, head over to our blog post: 11 Reasons You’re NOT Ranking in Google & How To Fix It. (We wrote it at the back of a real question, and it’s still one of the best-performing blog posts on our website!).

You can also download our checklist of the exact ways to optimise your blog posts.

While we always recommend optimising your content for search, by creating content centered around our clients’ questions, we didn’t always target high-traffic keywords. And yet, some of the blog posts we wrote following this approach still attract the majority of the traffic to our website, like this post: Why are we so expensive?

6. Delve deep into the topic

If you look at some of the blog posts we linked to, you’ll notice that our content is always quite in-depth. Generally speaking, the higher the word count, the more traffic you can expect to receive to your blog post. There’s enough data out there to prove that the more effort you put into your writing, the more opportunities you have to include:

• additional keywords,
• internal links,
• and optimised images.

All of this encourages Google to rank you higher on the search results. So aim to create the best piece of content on a certain topic, and you’ll be rewarded by Google sending more traffic your way.

And if you’re worried about not being able to create long-form content, don’t! As a business owner, you confidently answer the questions your clients ask you day in and day out without thinking twice about it. So look at writing blog posts as an efficient way to share the knowledge that’s in your head. Focus on how you’re making life easier for your readers – you’re educating, informing, and entertaining. You’re being of service.

Be honest and transparent. Don’t be afraid of giving away your knowledge – it pays back, as you can expect an increase in traffic and in enquiries. Just be mindful of the fact that longer content doesn’t mean boring. So keep your end-users (the people consuming your content) in mind, and make your content interesting and relevant.

7. Rinse and repeat

Once you’ve followed these steps once, rinse and repeat. Do this weekly for a year, and you’ll see huge results, much like we did. It’s by creating 25-30 blog posts in 2017 that we managed to increase our website traffic by 10 times. It’s hard work, but as long as you commit to it and find a way to keep yourself accountable to the process, you can make it happen!

Sure, we found it challenging at times. When we first started, we second-guessed ourselves, and we weren’t sure anyone was even reading. But as time went on, people started noticing our content, sharing it, and giving us praise. Our audience started to see us differently because we had this wealth of knowledge that was now available on our website for the world to see.

Publishing regular content changed our positioning in the market. And it changed the type of discussions we’d have during sales calls. We found that people would read our articles before jumping on a call with us. And by the time we spoke to them, they already had trust in us. This made our sales process much quicker and easier.

In 2017, our website started doing some of the selling for us.

And if you commit to publishing regular content on your website, you can get these results for your business too. You can start this whole process by downloading the content matrix which will help you create your entire content for the year. But it’s not just any content, this content will actually help deliver you sales and leads.

Would you like to join our 90-day challenge? 

In 2020, we are running three 90-day content marketing challenges inside our membership, Make Your Mark Online. Our challenges will start on the 13th of January, the 11th of May, and the 7th of September 2020, and we’ll ask all our members taking part to produce one piece of content every week. We’ll support them with weekly calls, training videos, and a private Slack group, giving them the support, motivation, and accountability to use content to increase website traffic and make a difference to the bottom line of their business. If you’d like to find out more and join us for the next 90-day challenge, head over to Make Your Mark Online, or give us a shout if you have any questions!

Martin & Lyndsay

The post How to 10x Your Website Traffic appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Lukey, our 10-week old son, was fast asleep.

Our cats were fast asleep.

We both had hot coffee.

It was a rare scenario in our house, and we had zero excuses not to talk about OUR PRICES.

We’re constantly telling small business owners to stop underestimating themselves and raise their damn prices! But, as always, it’s easier to give out advice than follow it yourself. When it came to our own business, we’d kept our web design prices the same for the last 18 months.

So why do small business owners, in particular, find raising their prices so hard? Because let’s face it huge corporations never seem to have this problem. 

I think we worry that people will say no and we’ll lose potential clients. In some cases, we feel like we’re not good enough to raise our prices, even though we know we deliver real value. Maybe it’s just because we’re British and we get all squirmy about talking money.

Martin and I felt all of these.

But the wonderful thing about being a team of two of is that we can have a discussion. I remember asking Martin, “Okay, but why should we charge more? What’s changed in our business?”

So we talked about it, and the more we talked about it, the clearer it was it had to happen.

Below, I’ve pretty much summed up our discussion: Why we’re increasing our web design prices.

How much will we charge for web design from April 2019?

Currently, our minimum package is £3497+VAT, and this will be increasing to £4497+VAT from the 4th of April. Yep, that’s a 28% increase. Quite a leap!

These are the reasons we’ve made that leap…

1. Our projects are getting more and more time-intensive

A website is more than just coding and techie stuff. It’s everything – design, user-experience, SEO, copy and content marketing. There is so, so much that goes into making a successful website and, as we’ve grown and developed, our projects have become more time intensive.

We take the time to delve into your business, understanding what your goals are for the future and who your ideal clients are. We plot how your users will journey through your site and how we can best convert them into leads. We consider everything from your big bold statement to the wording on call to action buttons. We experiment with different colours, fonts and styles. In short, we research and tweak and test constantly.

Don’t get us wrong, this is what we absolutely love to do, but our business model has slowly shifted over the past two years. We now take on fewer clients and spend more time and energy with those clients to make sure they get the best possible website for their business.

Essentially, we’re not a stack them high agency. We prefer to dedicate our time to a smaller amount of clients, because of this, we have to charge more for each individual site.

2. We invest heavily in our own learning

As I said before, a good website isn’t just about coding. It’s about design, user experience, SEO, copy and content marketing. We’ve learnt a hell of a lot about these topics through our own experience, but that doesn’t mean we can stop expanding our knowledge or not gain outside perspectives.

In order for us to deliver the best websites to our clients, we need to have the most up-to-date and in-depth knowledge. That’s why a few years ago we took the decision to cull our advertising spend and invest that time and money into learning and development.

We’re constantly striving to improve our own skills. Do we have to invest in our knowledge? Of course not, and many other web design agencies don’t do this. But we feel it’s the best thing to do for our clients’ websites.

We hire amazing people such as Col from Pixels Ink, who casts his expert eyes over the designs we create for our clients. We’re part of some amazing membership communities, like CMA (Content Marketing Academy) and Atomic, so we know exactly how to design websites for businesses who love content marketing. In fact, many of our new clients are coming to us because we know how to design a learning centre – a fantastic idea coined by Marcus Sheridan and introduced to us by Chris Marr (CMA).

We’ve also invested in experts like John Espirian to teach us about LinkedIn, Gavin Bell to teach us about Facebook ads, we’ve joined Derek Halpern’s course on how to write sales pages. And even though this has little to do with web design specifically, we still help our clients from the amazing things we’ve learned from these experts, and if they need more in-depth knowledge, we know who to recommend!

We spend tens of thousands of pounds every year on improving our skills and knowledge, and this is increasing year-on-year.

3. Many clients want advice and support

As we’ve grown, we’ve attracted a different kind of client. Clients who don’t just want an agency to design them a website, but need help with making their business a success.

This was (and still is!) very exciting for us because we love to teach. We love sharing our knowledge with our clients on how they can grow a successful online business. We’ll talk about branding, positioning, who they want to work with, where they want to be in the future, what their aims are for the next five years and what kind of lifestyle they want to lead. We’ll tell them how content marketing can help them or how to use SEO best practice in their business.

It’s a kind of holistic approach to web design, where we don’t just create our clients a website we help them build a successful online business. We build relationships with them which last and we absolutely love watching their businesses grow.

But all of this takes extra time and it also takes our expert knowledge. Knowledge we’ve spent a lot of time and money continuously developing.

4. We invest in the best tools

There are a shit-ton of free tools and plugins out there, especially when it comes WordPress, however, we like to invest in the best software for the websites we create.

We don’t offer a done-for-you SEO service, but we still invest heavily in SEO tools and software like SEM Rush, AHRefs and Majestic SEO. This allows us to identify where our clients can improve their rankings so we can make sure their traffic increases when we redesign their sites.

We also invest in tools our clients can use, such as Thrive Themes (which helps you build amazing sales pages). And if we do use plugins on our clients’ websites, we invest a lot in paid plugins. For example, there are tons of free contact form plugins out there, but we recently purchased a license for Gravity Forms to use on our clients’ sites.

So why do we prefer to pay for software rather than get it for free? Well, paid-for software is generally more accurate, more secure, and more trustworthy. It’s worth the investment from us to get it right for our clients.

5. We’re still a lot cheaper than other agencies

When we redesigned Janet Murray’s website, Janet said something quite interesting. Having done her own research Janet was getting quotes for new websites at 10/15K. You can listen to that podcast episode here. 

Many larger agencies charge tens of thousands for website design. So, yes, we’re more expensive than many other agencies or freelancers, HOWEVER, we’re often more affordable than a lot of bigger agencies too. The reason we can keep our costs lower than the bigger agencies is because our overheads are significantly lower. We don’t have a fancy office (we work from home) or a large team of staff. And we certainly don’t wear fancy suits or drive Audis!

We want to deliver a great return on investment, and we truly believe we do that.

Why the pricing discussion works

In the end, it was a no-brainer. Seeing all this on paper made it clear we had to raise our prices so we could continue to deliver an amazing product and service to our clients.

If you’re in a similar situation, where your prices have remained stagnant for years, I’d highly recommend thinking about how your business has changed, the extra things you do, how much you’ve developed and honed your skills. And ask yourself, are you charging enough to sustain what you currently offer?

Why do feel the need to explain our pricing?

I could’ve just edited the pricing page on our website and left it at that. But we made a commitment early on in our business to be open and transparent with our audience. Part of that is explaining our pricing and why we charge what we do so you can make a better buying decision.

Still thinking of getting a website redesigned?

As I said, our prices are going up on the 4th April 2019 and the minimum we will charge is £4497+VAT.

As of publishing this (11 March, 2019), you still have time to get in touch to get a website designed at our lower price.

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post Why We’re Increasing Our Web Design Prices appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Below, I wanted to outline the main reasons why we think you shouldn’t work with us.

1. You can’t afford it

Website design prices can vary. The average website can cost anything from £500 to £10,000+. Our web design prices range from £2997 – £4997. This can be off putting to some business owners. We get it. Our websites are a significant investment, but they’re exactly that, an investment.

The reason we charge this amount is based on the time it takes and research that’s involved. We create a design concept that is tailored around your specific goals, whether that’s getting your users to sign up to your email list or to fill out a contact form on your website. We have to understand your business fully to be able to build you an effective website.

Some business owners don’t want that. They just want an online billboard. If that’s what you want, we’re probably not right for you.

We want to deliver you a healthy return on investment. For a more detailed idea of what you can get for your money, read our recent post, How Much Does It Cost For A Website?

2. You don’t want to do any work

To able to create the best possible website, we need some help from you. If you were hoping that we’ll do 100% of the work and that you won’t have to lift a finger then things are going to be difficult.

Before we begin building your website we’ll have a meeting, usually via Skype. We’ll spend an hour or so talking about your business and finding out more about your products and services and overall business goals. We’ll need to ask you a few questions to try and understand as much as possible before we move forward.

We’ll then send you a questionnaire to fill out, where we ask you more detailed questions. It’s a worthwhile process, but it does take some effort on your part. We really want to understand your audience, the benefits of your products or services and why someone would choose you over your competitors. All of this valuable information will add to the final design which makes it extremely important. It takes some time but it’s worth it.

3. You want a website fast

If you’re looking for a rush job, then we are not the agency for you.

Our websites take 6-10 weeks on average to complete and for good reason. Your website is the most important tool in growing your business online.

Below, I’ve detailed our process and why it takes longer than you might think.

Research (1-2 weeks)

To be able to design a website that’s right for you, we need to spend a certain amount of time researching you, your market and your competitors. Along with doing our own research we’ll be gathering information from you via our initial Skype call and your questionnaire. We’ll also send you a few emails if we need any more clarification.

Planning (1-2)

After we have enough information from the research, we can start planning out your website. This will include lots of sketches on a whiteboard, post-it notes and lots of coffee. After all, we want to be wide awake when we’re getting the blueprints together for your new site.

Mockup (1-2 weeks)

Once we are happy with the plan of attack, we then move onto the design stage. This is where we bring together all of the research and planning to create a mockup of your new website. We will design you a homepage layout on photoshop that shows you how the website will look before we build it. We’ll also send a helpful video explaining why we designed it the way we did.

Build (3-4 weeks)

After you’ve seen the mockup and are happy, we then get to work designing your new website. This includes all the geeky stuff such as; coding your website, adding plugins, creating search engine friendly URLs and all the other stuff that comes with creating a high performance website.

Factoring all these things in, the whole process can take 2-3 months and believe it or not we see that as a good thing. I think we’d be doing you a serious disservice if we could get your website up quickly, which is why we just don’t work that way.

4. You don’t have time to provide us with information

We understand, you’re busy and you have a business to run. We will need around 5 -10 hours of your time if you choose to hire us to build your website. If you can’t find this time, we might not be the right fit for you.

Below, I’ve included a breakdown of how much time you will need to set aside.

• Initial chat – 1hr
• Filling out your questionnaire – 1hr
• Reviewing the mockup and giving feedback – 1hr
• Emails conversations and phone calls – 1hr
• Creating content* – 5 hrs
• Sending us images and text – 1hr

*Some of our packages include content writing so you should consider using this if you’re short on time.

Let’s face it, you know your business more than us, and we treat you as the expert.

Yes, we will research, plan, design and build your website. However, for it to work effectively, we need your help. The more information we have, the better the website will be.

5. You want a Yes Man (or woman)

Some people know exactly what they want their website to look like. They’ll have the exact design in their heads. The colours, the layout, the font…everything. They just need a web designer to do it for them. Unfortunately, we are not that kind of agency.

Unless you’re a digital marketing specialist with years of experience, it’s likely that your ideas need some improvement. It’s ok to have a vague idea of how you want the website to look, however, you need to trust that we know what we’re doing. That’s why you’re hiring us, after all.

We have years of experience in building high performance websites that look great, convert visitors and work well on search engines, why would you not want to use our expertise?

We view the relationship with our clients as a partnership, where we invest ourselves into your business and it’s success. Sometimes, that might mean we come up with new ideas, or make suggested changes. Plus, if I’m being honest, I’d struggle to keep my mouth shut if I thought something wouldn’t work. It’s in my nature.

6. You want to sit back and let the money roll in

Build it and they will come, right? Not exactly.

It would be great if you could just pay a web designer to build you a website and then you sit back and let the money roll in. This is rarely the case. If this is you, then you may have to go back to the drawing board.

Once your website is live, it will require some work from you to promote it or you could always pay someone to do it for you. Either way, you would have a plan of action in place to attract visitors to your website such as;

• A Content marketing strategy
• Facebook advertising campaign
• SEO strategy
• Google AdWords campaign
• Email marketing strategy

If you do understand that marketing is important and you’re prepared to do the work then we have some good news. After we build your website you get a free 1 hr digital marketing coaching session via Skype or a personalised marketing plan as a PDF. That means you’ll have a marketing strategy to go along with your brand new website.

We want you to have every possible chance to succeed and if you’re prepared to do the work, we’ll be right there with you.

7. You want the next Facebook

Unfortunately, we’re not Zuckerberg, making the next Facebook, Google or Amazon is going to be difficult. If you wanted the next big social media thing, you’ll need a team of developers available 24/7 to keep the site going. We just don’t have the capacity nor would we want to.

Summary

So there you have it. The 7 reasons you shouldn’t work with us.

We pride ourselves on being upfront and transparent, which is one of the reasons for this particular post. We would hate for any business owner to hire us for the wrong reasons.

If you’re still here and excited, then great! We’d love to hear more about your ideas, your business and what you want to achieve.

If you’re interested in getting a website, call us on 0161 410 1990

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Work With Us appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.