Posts Tagged ‘Internet marketing’

We had a full house for our AdWords training course at Business Training Made Simple last week, with a mix of AdWords newbies and more experienced AdWords users attending to learn how to improve their return on investment from Google AdWords.

It was great to see some familiar faces in the room, such as Alice from Coco Fashion, Jonathan from Wild Stoves, Andrew from Midas Corporate Consulting and Adele from Naked Divorce. And it was particularly nice to finally meet our client Jo Parker who has been getting great results from the AdWords campaign that we set up for her last year.

Throughout the day we covered everything from what AdWords is all about, through to how to select the right keywords, how to write better ads, what Quality Score is and why it is so important, and how to structure an AdWords account.

We also found time to cover some more advanced topics like Ad Extensions and Remarketing, and we had some fun critiquing each others websites as part of a discussion about landing page optimisation.

We’re running this course again on 10 August and there are still a few places left if you want to book a place. If you’re not sure whether you’ll find it beneficial, just check out this video testimonial from one of the people who attended last week’s course.

 

 

There’s only a couple of days left to qualify for the early bird discount on the next course that we’re running.

The course is all about how to improve your website so as it brings you more enquiries, more sales, and more profits.

Delivered by David Miles from Divadani and Anuschka Fritz from Moustique Design, this one day course will teach you:

• How to decide what approach to take with the website
• How to attract your target audience
• The seven things you must consider when designing a website
• How to write killer copy that will increase enquiries from your website
• How to put together an effective brief for a web designer
• What to consider when selecting a web designer and how to avoid getting ripped off
• What functionality you will need to enhance your business website
• Ten ways to market the website once it is complete.

This is an interactive course, and if you already have a website you’ll get the chance to have it assessed and critiqued. You’ll leave with a clear action plan of simple steps you can take to ensure your new or existing website gets results.

The course is taking place on 21 June in Central London and costs only £79.99 + VAT – and that includes lunch and other refreshments throughout the day.

Find out more about the course and book online today for your early bird discount.

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• Best Practices To Always Remember With Website Design (ronmedlin.com)

Well, it’s finally here. ‘Fusion’ by David Taylor & David Miles was published today!

This marks the culmination of several months of concerted effort by the two authors – a surprising amount of which ended up taking place after the final manuscript had been submitted to the publishers. It’s amazing how much work is involved in getting a cover designed, doing all the proof-reading, getting the layout right, and deciding what to put on the back cover of the book and who to dedicate it to.

But with help from the excellent Neil Coe at Carta Design, and Mindy and Emma at Ecademy Press, we have finally got there.

We are now eagerly awaiting our first delivery of the books so as we can start selling them to all the people who have already said they want a signed copy as soon as it becomes available. Hopefully those will be with us at some point next week.

Meanwhile, you can order the book from Amazon if that is easier for you. At the moment they are quoting 1-3 week delivery times but we’re told that this often happens on the day of publication and that if you order now it is likely that you’ll only have to wait a few days before the book is sent to you. Within a couple of days the Amazon page should be showing “in stock” like it does for most other books.

If you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, then it would be really helpful if you could please leave a review on Amazon for us.

Finally, we hope to have our dedicated Fusion website up and running within the next week. That will have it’s own blog so you can keep up to date with what the authors are doing and what people are saying about the book. And of course there’ll be a facility to order the book online (as well as buy the ebook version once it is available).

 

Do you reckon that no-one gets business from social networking? Do you think it doesn’t matter if your website isn’t iPhone friendly? Do you believe that the look of a website is more important than its usability?

Then read on…..

I’ve just got back from a week away in Somerset, where we stayed in a converted barn in the middle of nowhere. Thanks to the thick walls of the former barn, we had no mobile signal at all inside the building, which was great for getting a bit of peace and quiet.

Outside, we just about managed to get a signal if we stood in the right place. As for data – well, if the wind was blowing the right way we could sometimes get a 3G signal but most of the time the only option was a painfully slow 2G connection.

But modern habits die hard, so when @MrsJaneMiles and I decided we wanted to find a nice pub for dinner one night, I did the obvious thing and put a message out on Twitter asking for a recommendation. One of my Bristol based followers picked up on this and got the word out to a number of his Twitter contacts in the Glastonbury area and within a few hours I had received recommendations for three local pubs.

Excellent! One lucky landlord was going to get a bit of extra business thanks to the power of social media.

Because @MrsJaneMiles is allergic to dairy products, I wanted to check the pubs’ food menus to see where she had the best chance of being able to eat something.

I went to the website of the first pub – The King’s Head in Wells – and was confronted with a screen that simply said “Loading: 0%”. After a not inconsiderable wait (I’m on a mobile phone with a 2G connection here, don’t forget) it crept up to 5%. Then another long wait and it was up to 10%. After about five minutes it had struggled up to about 20% – at which point I gave up.

I’ve since seen the site on a laptop with a 3G connection and it’s a very nice looking site and the pub looks great. But they didn’t get our business because they didn’t make any allowance for the fact that some potential customers might not have been able to handle the highly graphical nature of the website.

Lesson 1: As I discovered when doing the research for ‘Fusion’, the use of mobile phones for accessing web sites is growing at a phenomenal rate. So if you are going to have a very visual, graphic heavy website (especially if it uses Flash), then you really should ensure you’ve also got a mobile-friendly version of the site which loads automatically if it detects that someone is accessing it from an iPhone or other mobile device.

The next pub I looked at was The Apple Tree Inn. Their website is much more basic, but I was able to navigate around it easily on my phone (even with a slow connection) and check out the restaurant menu. We would have gone there but, despite trying them at various times of the day over a 24 hour period, I couldn’t get through on the phone. It just rang and rang with no answer.

Lesson 2: Just because someone finds you via the web, it doesn’t mean they won’t want to talk to you. Buy an answering machine or, better still, use a call answering service so as your calls get answered by a real person even when you’re not around.

And so it was that we ended up going to The Who’d A Thought It in Glastonbury – an excellent pub with a range of beers, quality food, helpful and friendly staff, and a website that works!

What do you think? Should businesses be making more effort to ensure that their websites can be accessed quickly and easily by people on the move? Do pubs/restaurants really need to bother about this kind of thing, or would most people have checked them out from home on a wi-fi connection before going on holiday? Feel free to comment below!

Do you want to get the most out of Google AdWords without it costing you an arm and a leg?

If so, you’ll need to understand:

• how to select keywords that cost pence not pounds
• what to include in your Google ads to make people click through to your site
• when to use negative keywords to avoid throwing money down the drain
• the dangers of broad matching
• the seven essential things to include on every landing page
• how to track and improve your AdWords return on investment

This training course that David Miles is presenting on 18 May will teach you all this and more, and will show you how to get  great results from your pay per click advertising.

Where: Farringdon, London
When: 18 May 2011
Time: 9.00 am to 5.00 pm (full day course includes lunch and refreshments)
Cost: £99 + VAT with early bird offer of £79 + VAT if you book quickly

Master Adwords to ensure you’re not wasting money and learn how to maximise your pay per click advertising to get the results you want.

Click Here to Book Your Place Now!

On the day:

• Review Adwords accounts to see what’s working and what’s not
• Live case studies: hear how others are maximising potential
• Finding the right keywords: our experts share their tactics
• Tracking conversions and measuring return on investment
• Setting up a campaign for maximum impact
• PLUS so much more …tips, hints, tricks and bags of advice

Delivered by industry experts, you’ll come away fully equipped to maximise your Adwords account and get the results you want from your pay per click advertising.

“Since using David my enquiries are up 300% since he did AdWords work for me and my catering business.”
- Jo Parker, www.joannaparker.co.uk

Book your place now!