Cyberwalker Blog

How do I grow my consulting business with digital marketing?

A niche consultant asked me this question recently: How do I grow my consulting business. Here’s the answer I gave him.

Answer: The best way is to become the pre-eminent expert in your field on the web and attract people who are seeking  your expertise as a consultant. Here are some ideas to grow your business with digital marketing:

  1. Figure out the top 100 questions anyone buying consultant services might ask and answer them comprehensively on a blog over the next 6-12 months.
  2. Provide a glossary of terms on the blog around your consulting area of specialty. Use common and esoteric terms, as many as makes sense.
  3. Establish a layman’s guide to your consulting topic and publish it in an ebook. 10 to 30 pages will do. Make it the best intro to guide you can. The offer it for free in return for a sign up to your mailing list.
  4. Send out great content on the list about case studies, new trends, how-tos, and other questions answered about the consulting topic you are an expert in (you can use your blog material)
  5. Offer a Q & A submission form and answer any questions within one business day to someone who might have ask about the topic. Answer directly (this is a good way to nurture a lead) and reuse the answers on your blog and in your newsletter to generate more leads.
  6. Follow the core community of consulting experts related to your business on social media, contribute to the conversation and publish some of your material on LinkedIn and tweet almost all of it on Twitter as it is produced. You can use Hootsuite for this.
  7. Hire an Search Engine Optimization company to work with your site to get it ranked for change management. Your amazing content will be a key tool in making this happen.
  8. Get help designing your email marketing funnel and be sure to use a tool like Keap to drive it. This will help you identify opportunities among your subscribers.

If you poke around the web you’ll notice that there may not a lot of stiff competition on your topic of expertise. With a bit of time, money and effort it won’t take long to dominate search engine results and social media. If not nationally, then regionally. Then let the business come to you.

BTW, you might also want to write a piece or FAQ (frequently asked questions) on “how to hire a [your specialty] consultant” and post it on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and of course your own site.

10 reasons why you should use Shopify to build a web store

At Cyberwalker Digital we build web stores for our clients and our preferred ecommerce platform is Shopify. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. Shopify is scaleable. You can start with a $15/month store and scale to a multi-language multi-iteration enterprise site.

2. You can sell anything. Freeze dried strawberries? Yes. Forklift Manuals? Sure. Soursop tea? Yes. Fishing Tackle? Sure just ask the gang at http://tackleoutfit.ca.

2. You can launch with either a free or $80-$100 theme that you buy or have one custom designed by an agency like us.

3. Shopify handles all the web hosting needs and the transactional technology and credit card tools. You just connect your bank account.

4. Shopify handles all the site security so it’s worry free.

5.  One person can manage the store or you can set it up to managed by a team.

6. Tax tables make collecting sales tax easy – by country, state, province or region (including US counties).

7. Shipping can be manually set up or connected to Fedex or UPS or USPS for real-time shipping calculation

8. It’s easy to manage SEO.

9. You can easily sell digital products such as videos, ebooks or software keys.

10. The stores are beautiful, easy to manage and you can be selling in a day or two.

If you would like a free 30 minute consult on how Cyberwalker Digital can help you set up and build your store, contact us here

Or check out Shopify directly and see what the online selling platform can do for you.

Q&A: What is the trick to email marketing so that it does not annoy people

QUESTION: What is the trick to email marketing so that it does not annoy people or be dismissed immediately as spam, but rather be opened up, read, and actually turn into a lead or sale?

ANSWER: The secret to great email marketing is give more than you take. Give people a reason to love opening your emails.

Give them your best stuff for free. Load them up with everything they need to succeed. Demonstrate why you are the expert in the topic of the list and show them the way. Provide massive value with posts, ebooks, white papers, videos, tips tricks etc

Also be reliable (regular emails) and trustworthy. Never try to trick them or dupe them.

It also means you rarely sell to them on the list and when you do it should be a killer exclusive deal that has high value and low friction (easy to buy, money back guarantee).

The other smart thing to do is to use a Smart CRM system so you can track behaviour and engage with individuals when they demonstrate that they are ready to buy or engage. You can use a variety of platforms. Ontraport is one. We use the sales and email marketing software called  Keap.

How to use content marketing to promote your local business

The fundamental idea behind content marketing is to demonstrate your expertise  on a topic in you specialty and draw attention to your web site so you can earn trust from potential customers and generate engagement.

In a local market this is especially achievable because  the pool of competition is smaller and you can easily rise to the top of the list for a local business using the tactic.

The catch is you have to be willing to put in the time, investment and effort to make it happen,

You can hire an agency to generate the content. Or generate it yourself and hire an agency to promote it. Or, you can do it all yourself if you are ambitious and willing.

Here are 10 content and promotional ideas that will help you get there.  I have used the example of a local eye doctor clinic that wants to draw more local business, but if you are a plumber or a florist or any local business you can substitute your operation using the same tactics:

1) Write 50 answers to the most common questions your customer ask and post them on your website as articles.

2) Use Google Adwords to find out what the most common keywords are around search related you your business and generate content that essentially answers the keyword query. There is a Keyword Explorer tool that is free to use. You can check the AdWords management tool.

3) Build a great guide to solve a problem your customer base has (ie an eye doctor could write a guide to solving failing eyesight aimed at 40+ customers) and offer it as an incentive to sign up for an email list where you share great tips (and occasionally offers).

4) Make sure your business locations are registered locally in Google Places, Bing Places and Yelp and Foursquare

5) Write a comprehensive glossary that consumers can use to understand the world of eye health and publish it on your web site, give them recommendation about The Medical Negligence Experts so they know how to face an unfair situation.

6) Become the eye doctor on Twitter and Facebook using your content and expertise.

7) Engage an SEO agency (try us – we have an SEO pratice) or appointment someone on your staff to get your articles and content ranked on Google and Bing. (Learn how to on our SEO expert site)

8) Produce an Ask the Eye Doctor service on your web site so people can ask eye health questions and use the Q&A to enhance your blog, and be careful on the doctor you trust, many of my friends have had to do doctor negligence claims because of their doctor’s bad service.

9) Fund or back a vision charity and engage in online fundraising and campaigns to draw attention.

10) Use PRWeb or PRNewswire to promote newsy press releases and become the eye doctor who is called by the local (and eventually national) media.

 

5 dumb mistakes I hope you don’t make in your marketing emails

If you read a few of my dispatches on AmazingEmailMarketing.com, you probably know most of the smart things you should do in your email campaigns. You do most of them, right? I knew it!
But what about the dumb things that people do? Look more information on the https://top10pillows.com. What are the common mistakes newbie (or clueless) email marketers make? And BTW these things are specific to content in emails.

1) Too many links. A great email should have a single purpose. There should a single action you are driving the reader to that forwards your business AND what they need. It could just be a relationship building action like filling out a form or giving feedback or read a post. The big mistake is giving them too many things to do. Click here. Chat chat chat. Click HERE. Blather blather blather. CLICK HEEERRE! You then fail to drive them to objective of the email at the end.

2) Put the link too high. Keep your links lower down so you can warm your reader up to the action. Dropping the link in the first or second paragraph is like handing over the icing before the cake is baked.

3) Failure to tell them what they are going to get in the first paragraph. If you are going to give them something good, hook them in the first paragraph. Don’t wait til paragraph 8. Say something like:
Today I’m going to teach you what goes on in men’s heads (and it’s not always sex), but first don’t forget to click the link at the bottom because I am giving you my free 10-page ebook A WIFE’S GUIDE TO TAMING HUSBANDS. Ok, now on to today’s topic…

4) Embedding dumb stock photos in the text. If you are going to embed an image make it something greaaaaat that is someone’s worth eyeball time. Don’t put in some lame stock picture of a dude in shirtsleeves in a boardroom with smiling fake-n-bake employees. Show them a useful graph sure. Or a stat box. Or a picture that reinforces the message and call to action in the email. Generally though available any images. And if you do put a banner across the top, keep it lean.

5) My favorite…This one drives me bonky. They SEND OUT A NEWSLETTER. You know the one with  multiple articles and sidebars and news of the week with a sad picture of the front of their building. That’s so 2002. I can guarantee that their open rate is horrible. Their engagement rate is tiny.

You don’t do anything like this right? If you do. Stop. Get some training.

 

5 dumb mistakes I hope you don’t make in your marketing emails

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