Making The Most Of The Knowledgebase

I was talking to one of our members the other day and I mentioned the Knowledgebase and they’d never taken the time to actually go and take a look, so I thought it worthy of an email to you this morning.

I know that most ‘directories’ are exactly that, a place for you to be listed as a promotional tool… but here at The Holistic Directory we like to do things a little differently!

You see, we appreciate that many of our members don’t have a strong understanding (and often inclination) when it comes to marketing their business, and we want to help.

That’s why we set up the Knowledgebase.

The Knowledgebase is just that – an area where you can expand your knowledge on a growing number of subjects:

• Branding
• Business Advice
• Human Resources (HR)
• Legal
• Marketing
• Membership
• Money Matters & Accounting
• Networks & Networking
• Q&As With The Experts
• Resources & Downloads
• Social Media
• Therapist News
• Work Life Balance

For example, in our ‘Q&As With The Experts’ area you’ll find these videos:

• Google+ with Jenny Braithwaite
• Marketing for holistic start ups with Nial Adams
• Marketing with no budget for holistic businesses with Nial Adams
• Preparing For and Promoting Event Opportunities with Nial Adams
• SEO with Kris Harris
• Direct Mailing with Graham Arrowsmith

Each is up to 90 mins long and you’ll hear our experts answering questions that are from and relevant to our holistic business members (and there’s more coming soon!).

I urge you to take some time to explore what there is on offer here for you. I can guarantee that you will learn useful things that will really help you with your business and your marketing.

So how can you find this treasure trove of information?

Log in here: https://www.theholisticdirectory.co.uk/account

and then visit: https://www.theholisticdirectory.co.uk/support

(Not a member yet? Find out more here: https://www.theholisticdirectory.co.uk/advertise or get in touch and we’d love to help you) 🙂

If you have any questions please email them to support@theholisticdirectory.co.uk 

Have a great rest of the week and enjoy this amazing (and at times bizarre!) weather we’re having and I’ll send you another update soon.

Blessings
Sophie
x

P.S. Did you know that we have a YouTube Channel where we promote our members through our interviews and that you can be interviewed by me all as part of your membership? Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCLVtr0Fq0RLTOYbIcfmGBA

Why Articles Help Boost Your Business

You’ve heard us say it loads of times; “You can add articles as part of your membership and it will help make your business more visible”, but does it really make a difference!?

I’ve got an example for you from one of our members who has recently renewed. We were looking at their stats you see and we found that in their first year with us they received around 300 views of their business listing (and we’ll go into how you can make sure those views turn into clients in another article!) – not world shattering perhaps, but good visibility non-the-less.

But here is where it gets interesting…

You see, they didn’t just have a business listing, they also have been proactive in adding articles to the website too and this is the difference it’s made:

 During the 12 months of being with us, they posted 15 articles, just over one a month, and those articles have been seen just under 6,000 times!! Now, i’m sure you’ll agree, that is quite a big jump in the level of visibility for the business and well worth the effort getting them written and shared.

As you’ll know, at the base of every article is a link to the authors business listing and also their website so not only do you help people with your informative writing, you also enable them to build trust with you and your business and then they are easily able to contact you to find out more (again another article about writing an effective bio to follow!).

So, if you’re not already posting articles on The Holistic Directory then I urge you to consider doing so.

As you can see, even sharing one a month can have a dramatic effect on how much exposure your business gets, not only on the Directory website but also online in general. And we’ve not even mentioned the extra exposure you can get by adding offers and events!

If you’d like help with ideas on what to write or you’ve got the articles but either struggle to or don’t have time to get them added to the website then please send them to us and we will be happy to help!

You can contact us at support@theholisticdirectory.co.uk Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing lots of lovely articles from you soon 🙂

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 Written by Sophie Jewry of The Holistic Directory

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 P.S. If you’re not a member yet and you’d like to get in on the action then check out our great value memberships online here: https://www.theholisticdirectory.co.uk/advertise/elite-membership

Making The Most of The Holistic Directory (And Other Promotions!)

I was just checking out one of our members stats and it got me thinking about how people use directories and what their expectations are. So I thought I’d write this article…

In 7 months:
Their business listing received 243 visits
The 1 article that they have online received 120 views
They had also posted a couple of offers and events that would have each had roughly the same views as the article so we’ll round those up to 200

So in the 7 months they received an average of 80 ‘touches’ a month for their £10 a month membership (or less if they had taken an annual or lifetime option). Consider that to Google Adwords, Facebook Advertising etc that sometimes generates no actual clicks to your page and will cost upwards of £1 per day (ie 3 times the price of HD membership)! And the fact that the directory part is only a small piece of the Holistic Directory’s offering (download our Membership Prospectus here).

Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg as these 80 touches are not guaranteed clients but they are people who have an interest in the business and the article subject and have been interested enough to click to view it.

From here it is in the hands of the business listing to entice the visitor to take action and get in touch and I’d like to share with you some examples of how you can

1) Increase the likelihood of people taking action
2) Increase the number of potential touches for your business

So, let’s get straight into it…

1 – How can you get people who land on your business listing to take action?

No different to a promotional postcard, leaflet, brochure or even website, your listing is your platform to entice the visitors to take action – i.e. contact you!

Just because people are landing on your page, doesn’t mean that they are going to do anything about it… unless you give them a reason to.

Think about the reasons why someone might be on your page:

• They may have an interest in the subject
• They may be wanting to find out more about you
• They may be looking for a solution to a problem they have
• They may have got there by mistake

So you can guarantee that not everyone that lands on your page is ready to buy now. But you can also guarantee that there will be a proportion of visitors that ARE ready to buy and they’re looking for a good reason to do it now AND WITH YOU, not your competitor.

1) Does the copy on your listing give them a good reason to buy from you and not your competitor?

2) Does the copy on your listing give them a good reason to buy NOW rather than do nothing and put it off until later?

3) Do you have a special offer that entices them to take action NOW?

4) Do you have a clear Call To Action telling your visitors what you want them to do next?

If you are not answering a resounding yes to all of the above then, bluntly, you are doing yourself a disservice and pretty much giving away your potential clients to your competitors.

If, as a visitor to your page, I can see no reason to act now and I have to think about how I might get in touch with you, then I am having to think too much. In order for me to take the first step of getting in touch with you, downloading a free gift – whatever – I want it to be effortless.

This is of course just a small part of what you can do to boost your response rate from your promotions but if you do nothing else but address the above 4 key points then you will see an increase in the number of referrals you get from anywhere you promote your business.

2 – How can you increase the number of touches for your business?

We’ve designed the directory and the membership to give you the maximum opportunity to get in front of potential customers by enabling you to add:

Business listing
Articles
Event listings
Special Offers

Each of these interlink between each other so that it is as easy as possible for an interested party to get from one of your items to your business listing (and back again) as possible.

How can you increase your chances of being seen?

Simply by being more active!

If you take the article as an example, there were 120 views over a 7 month period. If there had been at least one article added per month then you are boosting that to 840. Add into that offers and events and soon your numbers begin to grow.

If you’re even more savvy and you write articles that you know will get more people clicking then you increase your view rate even further.

So, as with many things in life, the more you put in, the more you get back. The more articles, offers and events you add, the more you get seen.

Plus, even better than that! The more you post, the more you are seen as a credible expert in your area of expertise. People are looking more and more for businesses that can help them specifically and the more you can demonstrate this, the faster you will build trust and rapport with your readers.

In Summary…

Think about the customer experience. What do you like to see from people you are thinking about buying from? Think about what your Ideal Customers would like to see you doing and DO IT!

Active blogging and promotion increases both your visibility and your credibility and builds trust with potential clients while you’re sleeping. It also gives your SEO a boost too.

Carefully crafted business listings will increase the amount of referrals you get.

After all, what is the point of just splattering an un-dynamic, unimaginative, not particularly thought-out message everywhere? I’m sure you’ll agree that a well worded, targeted, easy to read and understand message is far more attractive and likely to get you to take action.

I haven’t even touched on using specific web links and tracking numbers to be able to track where your leads are coming from and I’m guessing you don’t know 100% where all your contacts come from either. That’s content for another article later! 😉

If this has got you thinking that you’d like to make some changes but you have no idea where to start, get in touch with us at support@theholisticdirectory.co.uk and we’ll be delighted to help you.

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Article by Sophie Jewry
of The Holistic Directory and Brand Kitchen

N.B. We haven’t included the stats for any events or offers in this example but they will also have received views similar to that of the article.

Marketing – Know Your Place!

One of the big mistakes that so many people make in business, large or small (or even ‘micro’), is understanding the value of ‘Positioning’. It’s a simple marketing strategy that every business owner can and should adopt. It costs very little, or nothing really, as it’s about making some simple decisions.

Let me explain…

Positioning is the fancy term we apply to the concept of deciding how you want other people to think about your business. It’s part of the fabric of your branding but it’s even more than this. It will help you to target the right audience, with the right message.

When we engage with a company, their brand and their products or services, we always adopt a perception of what type of business they are and how we choose to think about them. Positioning factors would include things like; being seen as budget, good value, or even exclusive and ‘high-end’.

Other aspects might be how a business like to relate to its customers; is it friendly and relaxed, or more ‘professional’ and traditional in the way it presents itself?

The reason this is important is because it defines the type of customer that it attracts. For example; if I run a therapy service, am I aiming for a particular type of customer? This could be on the basis of age, gender, needs, interests, locality, etc.

These features really do make up your business personality. And yes, every business has some form of personality and your aim is to make yours as attractive as possible.

However, the real key in position is to be clear about the specific target audience you want to attract. It could be that you want to specialise in certain areas, for certain needs or with certain types of services. This is the very opposite of trying to present yourself as a generalist. Very few customers are every attracted to a business because they are ‘generalist’, whereas we much prefer to spend money with people who we believe match our needs specifically.

So here are a few questions to help you find your best Positioning:

1.    How do we want people to perceive our value of service; top-end, budget, exclusive?
2.    What type of customers are we looking for; by age, gender, need and other demographic?
3.    Are we reflecting our best assets as part of our Positioning; and are we actively promoting these?
4.    How can we improve and refine our Positioning to be more specific in our marketing?

And finally…

How will we know when we’ve got our Positioning right; will we test it and if so how?

With these questions as a simple place to start I’d recommend looking at other businesses that are in your space, perhaps your competition, and look to see if they have any clear Positioning. How do you, and other, describe their business personality and is it working for them?

By Nial Adams
of Make Marketing Work and PUSH Academy

Make 2014 The Year You Start Using Video

• Online video users are expected to double to 1.5 billion in 2016.

• Only about 24 percent of national brands are using online video to market to consumers.

• 52 percent of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions.
• 92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others.

Video is becoming more and more relevant for business for so many reasons. They encourage more interaction with your audience, they get people staying on your pages longer, they help your search engine rankings and if you’re building a YouTube presence alongside posting videos on your website you’re also increasing the ways you can be found online.

Videos can be informational, they can be fun, they can be whatever you want them to be. Take a few minutes out of your day to see what other people are doing and consider how you can start to bring more video into your business.

They don’t have to be hour long epic movies, you can use platforms like Vine ( https://vine.co/ ) to promote your business in just 6 second chunks (you’d be amazed how creative people can be with these videos – check out some inspiration here

Use your imagination, get a plan in place and start making them.

Remember, they don’t have to be perfect to start with, it’s better to have a non-perfect video online, helping you get found, than a perfect video that is never published!

However you decide to use video this year, be sure to have fun with it.

N.B. above stats from: http://digiday.com/brands/celtra-15-must-know-stats-for-online-video/

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By Sophie Jewry
of www.sophiejewry.com
and The Holistic Directory and The Brand Kitchen

Heart Felt Social Media For 2014

Being in the holistic/ alternative health industry you would naturally call yourself a heartfelt business, helping and healing people all comes from the heart.

Sometimes Heartfelt businesses struggle with marketing because this part of the business usually comes from the right hand side of the brain, not the heart. What if for 2014  we could make social media marketing come straight from the heart, wouldn’t that feel a lot easier.

4 steps to heart felt social media marketing:

Helping Tweets

Instead of giving up on Twitter because you don’t know what to tweet, make a plan to tweet a helpful message on the hour every hour ( these can be automated ) Perhaps your practice helps people to detox their lives, how does someone detox their life? If you were to explain the whole process from start to end, including the right foods and drinks to have, relaxation techniques etc.. you’d have a lot of content.  Once you have your content you can then chunk it into tweets and start posting out onto Twitter, your tweets will reach people and help people. Try and include a link back to more information if you can and have a call to action, once that person has read more what else can they do? Can they book a consultation, a work shop, buy your book?

Remember to engage in between your automated tweets as there may be people who want to ask questions and because Twitter wants you to engage with your followers.

Hangout with them

I’ve often thought I’d like to juice or get into eating raw food, but I don’t really know where to start and I know there’s others like me. I need help, I like being in a classroom environment but because of my work I’m always in front of the computer and too busy to travel somewhere. If a Heartfelt business really loved me they would provide a Google+ hangout for me to attend! You can help and reach people like me by using Google+ to hold a hangout. Small private groups can attend on a hangout but if you want to reach out to the masses then hold a hangout on air which would be public for anyone to see. The beauty about a Hangout on Air is that it’s recorded and posted automatically to Youtube so you can carry on helping people long after the hangout has ended.

Help the joggers

Even though I’m always in front of the computer I will make the effort to exercise. Something I like to do is jog and when I’m jogging I like to listen to motivational speakers. The same content that you’ve used to tweet out or the content you shared in the Google Hangout could be recorded for a podcast, with a podcast you’re talking to someone directly, how helpful is that!

Give them a group

It’s well known that being in a group of people working together towards a goal is usually better than trying to do it by yourself. You can help people come together and give them a place to share ideas, motivate each other as well as support each other. Facebook is a great place to host such a group. As it’s a supportive group I would recommend to keep it closed, this means that it’s by invite only and the general public will not be able to access it. Giving them a group is helping your clients to help each other, I now belong to the  Raw, Juice, Smoothie and Foody Group  I shall be get plenty of tips and advice from others here, fingers crossed for a hangout in 2014!

Happy New year to you all Let 2014 be Heartfelt

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By Julie Bishop
Founder of JobHop    Founder of Specialist Social Media
Instructor for Love Social Media    Find Julie on Google+

Time To Take A Fresh Look At Marketing?

So the start of a new year is always a good time to adopt some fresh thinking and even better when you turn that into action.

I’m going to take a wild guess here but I’m thinking that when you hear the word ‘marketing’ you feel the same way as a lot of people I meet and talk to. “I really don’t get it”, or “I don’t know where to start” tend to be the most common reaction.

So if either of the statements above sums up how you feel as well, then relax, you’re not alone.

What I’d like to do is give you a really simple recommendation of the best place to get started. And it makes no difference if you’re completely new to marketing or you’ve been in business for years.

The very first thing I encourage you to do is stop focusing on marketing how-to ideas. And what I mean with this is don’t become preoccupied with yet another great idea for marketing activity. Before you start with the activity you really want to learn what makes marketing work in the first place. This is even more important if you’re currently spending money on adverts and promotions.

What you really want to be learning is how do you approach marketing in the first place. There are various elements, all of which are important, and here’s my list:

• What are you actually selling; not the product or service you offer, but the perceived benefits and what are these?

• What makes people want to buy what you have to offer? What emotions drive this action?

• Who are the types of people that typically buy what you have to offer and how do you know this?

• What makes your biggest competitors good at what they do – what makes them different to you?

• Why should people buy from you – what makes you and your business really different?

These five questions are all fundamental to deciding how to think and feel about your marketing. You need to get a clear sense of what each one means before you can start to think about any sort of marketing plan or campaign.

Above all, the really important thing here is to be totally honest with yourself. You’ve every reason to be so. If you find yourself stuck on any of these questions then perhaps you need to take a step back and start asking more questions; what do you know about your business and how well do you understand it?

So if marketing all seems a bit of a confusing subject, or something you still struggle to get to grips with, then use these five questions and gain a bigger sense of awareness and confidence before you dive it.

This is a great exercise for every business to go through once a year and the best time to do that is always now!

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By Nial Adams
of Make Marketing Work

Why Do So Many People Struggle With Marketing?

Let’s face facts; so many business owners and managers, and the self-employed, really struggle with marketing. And that’s to be expected. The good news is that it doesn’t need to be like this

There are three simple reasons why I believe this happens.

1) So many businesses, a much larger proportion than you might expect, actually don’t do any proactive marketing at all. They may benefit from a form of reflective marketing, where they have a foothold or reputation in the market but they don’t really control or influence it.

This is a bad thing in many ways, because they can’t improve it or enlarge it, but even more dangerous is that they can’t recover it should it start to decline. I’ve seen this happen a lot of the past few years. Especially as there has been a declining market in many sectors.

2) The second reason is that many businesses spend money on marketing ideas and actions without really knowing why or doing this as part of a plan. In truth, a large proportion of money in marketing is spent on ideas that are sold to business owners. They weren’t part of a thought-out process.

This is also a big problem, as it seems to suggest that marketing is just pot luck; keep buying ideas until one or two of them become successful. Yes, it’s true that marketing is a lot about trial and error but you still need to have a process to follow in doing this efficiently.

3) And the last reason is very specific. This is because the focus of the marketing is completely on the wrong thing. All too often business people focus on product and price, mistakenly believing that this is where they need to concentrate. It’s not.

I believe that marketing is an inside-out job. Before you can start promoting your products or services you need to focus marketing who you are and what you’re all about. People buy from people, no matter how big the company is. They want, above all, to feel a sense of trust, confidence and comfort. Then they are able to consider what value you have to offer.

This last of the three points is the one that will really help you to re-calibrate your whole approach to marketing and the way you design your business. So I encourage you learn more about this.

You can read my blog on this – “Are you focusing on completely the wrong thing in your marketing?”, where I explain one of the most powerful business concepts I’ve learned over the past two decades.

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By Nial Adams
of Make Marketing Work

Last Minute Promotions For Christmas

This is a busy time of year for most people getting ready for Christmas, with shopping, on their feet all day, feeling tired and stressed.

So hopefully you are looking after them to manage with this time of year but also help them when they are buying gifts for everyone!  Do not miss out on this marketing opportunity.

There is still plenty of time for marketing opportunities and promoting offers.

Did you know that Monday 2nd December is the busiest day for spending on the internet?  Do you have anything available on your website for people to buy – products, gift vouchers etc?  In your marketing offer that availability.

Promote your gift vouchers on social media sites, in your clinic/salon/treatment room and in your emails to your clients.  Also offer them in gift packages with products or to gift wrap them free of charge – you can make them into a scroll or Christmas cracker with Christmas confetti inside!, provide them in a Christmas Card.

If you have a salon/clinic/treatment room, have some ready made up for clients to buy straight away and also they are able to see what they look like.  Remember to have pictures of them available on your website and social media.

You can have Countdown To Christmas Offer.  These can be a different offers every day or every week towards Christmas like an advent calendar  (subject to what you are able to offer in products and therapies)  such as beauty therapies – eye brow shape, manicure, file and polish, massage, reflexology, onsite massage, eyelash perm/tint,  products, ready blended oils, candles, cd’s,  books, etc.

Provide a raffle for a luxury prize – maybe a head to toe therapy package – with raffle tickets at £1 and money raised towards your favourite charity.

You still have time to organise a open day/evening event at your salon/clinic or if you provide treatments at your home you could run one there.  I have in the past organised open evenings as a thank you to my clients and if they bring somebody new they get free raffle tickets.  At these evenings they can have taster treatments and drinks and nibbles are supplied with products etc available to buy.  Even in my own home I have had around 30 people attend! And all sent home after a lovely evening with a goodie bag filled with sweets, samples of products, a candle, marketing materials such as a bookmark, key ring and fridge magnet and a CD of calming music.

Have a think and research what others are doing.  This could be your busiest time of year!  Look after your clients and make them feel special and they will keep coming back for more.

Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year

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By Alison Brown
of Ali’s Therapy Academy

An Interview with Alison Brown of Ali’s Therapy Academy

Join us as we get more of an insight into Ali Brown and her holistic coaching business Ali’s Therapy Academy. A professional and successful holistic practitioner herself, offering many treatments including; massage, reflexology, Reiki, sports massage, vertical reflexology, Indian head massage, Hopi ear candles, hot stone massage, Thai herbal compress massage, aromatherapy and stress management, Ali has got a new mission in life – to help holistic business owners get started and be successful.

During the interview we discuss the Academy and how membership can be useful and also a couple of the top difficulties faced by new holistic business owners:

1) Start-up overwhelm – so much to do and just feeling overwhelmed with where to start and what is most important.

2) How to get more clients – an issue faced by businesses old and new.

Also Ali’s tip tip for businesses: Implementation!

Among other things, we also touch on networking and how important it is for marketing, confidence and referrals. Ali runs a workshop designed specifically for those who find the prospect daunting, or even terrifying, to give a gentle introduction to networking and how to get started.

You can see what workshops Ali has coming up here: http://alistherapyacademy.co.uk/events/

Connect With Ali:

http://alistherapyacademy.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/AlisTherapyAcademy

Tweets by alistherapyacad

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alison-brown-owns-ali-s-therapy-academy/39/248/103

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