“Martyn was introduced to me as someone who could assist our company with the preparation of a 5 year Business plan. from our first meeting he very quickly developed a deep understanding of the Business and offered excellent ideas. the completed work he presented was detailed, and thorough, i would have no hesitation in recommending martyn to others and look forward to working with him in the future.”

Feedback initially provided through LinkedIn

Here are my top 10 tips for gaining better use from the internet

1. Know Your Website Audience.
You know the type of people who will visit your shop or place an enquiry, and you will respond in a way that tunes in with them. Make sure your website also resonates in the same way. Engineers or buyers seeking a quote may prefer functional websites over flashy ones.
2. Free Monitoring & Research
Do all your monitoring & research online for free – no need for a PR firm. Google Alerts allows you to monitor phrases and alert you when they appear on the internet – such as your name or that of your company. Google Analytics is a powerful tool to monitor volumes & keywords, exit and entry pages for your website. RSS Feeds allow you to receive newsfeeds in the form of a personalised magazine.
3. Research using LinkedIn
Word of mouth remains the primary trigger to gain business. However with an increasing number of business people on LinkedIn, many are using this tool to research & double check credentials. Too many people set themselves up on LinkedIn and do nothing more. The ones who have taken it seriously & created a full profile and published recommendations generate a lot more business.
4. Give Before You Get
Visitors arriving at your website do not have the reassurance of knowing whether they can trust you in the way they can when visiting your shop or calling your office. If your business is about giving advice, consider a “freemium” model – giving useful information away for free tempting the reader to contact you. This concept feels alien when traditional business owners first explore the internet, believing they should be charging the customer for everything.
5. Nurture Your Customer Data
Having the email of a customer may appear to be just a point of contact. But if you gather specific data on your customer and you have the opportunity to develop that relationship. For a musical instrument repair business, knowing which customers have a clarinet allows the owner to email a tips sheet for clarinet maintenance just to those who own one.
6. Protect Your Prices
A traditional business prices its products at a level which covers the overheads of a shop or office. Online businesses can sell at a lower price as they have fewer overheads to cover. Using the website to compete on price will ultimately pull down the shop prices to online levels and ruin the business.
7. Retail or Wholesale
When selling furniture, someone experienced in e-commerce has a much greater chance of success in selling furniture online than a person who has had a traditional retail outlet for 20 years. However the e-commerce person has no experience in product sourcing. Perhaps the struggling traditional retailer could switch his focus from direct retailing to selling products on a wholesale basis to the online retailers, thereby capitalising on his strengths.
8. Collaborations
To get your website found in Google, a very important element is the number of “backlinks” pointing to your website from other websites. These have different values, and a link from a government website is worth a thousand links from start-up sites. So it is important to find complimentary business that you can pass work to and from as well as backlinks. You may also find businesses that pay 5-10% affiliate commission if a clickthrough from your site to theirs results in a sale.
9. Don’t Hide Yourself Away
If you provide a service, one of the first places a visitor goes on your website is “About Us”, followed by “Testimonials”. If you have lots of case studies, testimonials, awards and years of experience to trump the competition, then put it all on the website to give your visitor the confidence to get in contact.
10. Think Keywords
You should have lodged at the front of your mind around half a dozen keywords or keyphrases. They are the words a prospective customer would type into Google to find your website and describe your business. They should also appear in offline marketing literature, your elevator pitch when networking, and press releases. In fact everywhere.

I’d welcome your comments if you think there is an angle I haven’t covered.

“I involved Martyn on an advisory basis to review our product marketing strategy and help insure it was as effective and streamlined as possible. Being a smaller business, we are not overloaded with permanent marketing staff and Martyn has proved to be a valuable asset with his constructive feedback, experience and ideas. After our initial work together I hope to continue to involve Martyn when required and would highly recommend his experience and expertise.”

Feedback initially provided through LinkedIn

“I hired Martyn for 6 Months to assist me with a project in the Telecoms sector. Martyn quickly got to grips with some very complex models and the overall business concept and was able to constructively critique the work done to date in the project. This was extremely valuable input. Martyn then expertly set about completing the project tasks that had been assigned. Highly focused, articulate and with a deep sector knowledge, Martyns work was of the highest standard and he quickly became an integral and valuable member of the team. I would be delighted to work with Martyn again on a future project or indeed recommend him to others in search of a professional with the qualities I have outlined above.”

Feedback initially provided through LinkedIn

Who introduced the client to e-FM?

Recruitment Agent – ABPM

Who from eFM managed the client?

Martyn Hodgson.

Describe the client’s needs to be met

Company had introduced new ERP systems, including financial systems with little success. No trusted information could be obtained and management confidence had disappeared. The FD had lost his job. They wanted an interim FD to quickly regain management confidence in the figures generated by the new systems

How did we approach meeting the need?

We started by personally gaining the confidence of the management and ensuring that promises made were kept. Also reconstructing weekly accounts using the information sources that could still be trusted and gradually reconciling to the new system data. Once the new systems could be trusted, start to provide deeper analysis to support the information.

What was the outcome?

Management team had regained confidence in trusting the figures generated by the systems. We also raised the profile and standing of the accounts team. Finally we built a lot of interfaces with the production team for reconciling data and enabling greater data drill down

Quantify the lasting benefits for the client

Good quality management information for decision making. Significant improvement in the efficiency of the systems, enabling better use of staff time. Greater coordination between finance and productions teams

From 2012, it will be compulsory for all employers to contribute to a pension scheme for employees. All eligible workers, not already in a qualifying scheme will be automatically enrolled into the employers national pension scheme. Even though single director companies will not be affected by this new rule, their clients or suppliers may be affected, and this could have a knock-on effect on your own business.

Challenge Those Sacred Cows

For businesses who are struggling to make ends meet without bank support, it could be the final straw for many. Perhaps it’s a time to finally get radical. Challenge those sacred cows you’ve previously thought untouchable? Next year, you’ll need to find the cash from somewhere.

Do You Have the Right Staff?

Take a good look at the work needed to be done and skills required. Now map your current staff to it. I bet some staff are rushed off their feet and struggle with some of the tasks thrown at them, whilst others appear to have a comparatively easy existence. Is this the staff setup you want to keep and apply additional pension cost to?
Your ultimate target has to be for your staff cost to be as low as possible whilst having the staff at all skill levels. Both now and as the company changes in the future.

We’d be happy to perform a financial diagnostic review of your company. It would quickly identify cash that can be released and staff that can be better utilised. Contact Martyn Hodgson if you are interested.