There are a number of common mistakes regarding the thinking behind men’s shopping behaviors. For example, it is commonly perceived that men don not actively search for deals, which is not entirely accurate. After these statistics have been reviewed, it is evident that men actively search for bargains; they just use a different approach to women.

Men between the age of 25-40, especially those with children, are shown to be influenced by the results of search engines, such as Google, therefore your business should have a strong web presence with more than a passing interest in search engine optimization. It is also significant to note that many men will research your products or services using social networks. So effectively utilizing your social media to communicate your message and branding offers you an edge over your competitors.

• 50% of young dads are influenced by digital ads and banners.
• 68% of male smartphone owners are likely to make purchases thanks to mobile adds, compared to 58% of female smartphone users.
• Only 5% of men check catalogues for ads
• 44% of young dads are influenced by major search engines
• 44% of men tell their friends about positive experiences they have online concerning products or brands
• 54% of men use social networks when researching products

The Three Characteristics of a Good Copywriter:

Inquisitiveness. If you do not possess this quality in abundance you will neither enjoy nor be successful at copywriting. You could be invited to compose an article on anything from homemade cakes to nuclear war! If you work with a company repetitively, you will be asked time and time again to create exciting new content on the same old products and services. Without an honest desire to learn, and a strong tolerance for research, you will not be able to recognize the new angles to sell commonplace items which is the core of good copy. If you desire information for information’s sake, are excited by details, and relish the inside scoop, you will thrive in a career in copywriting. If you fancy being the person reading something thought-provoking, rather than writing something thought-provoking, this is not the job for you.

Insightfulness. An enormous portion of copywriting (and in fact Internet marketing overall) is the ability to resonate with a specific audience. With other literary vocations such as journalism, you have the added bonus that you can watch another and interpret their body language as you communicate; copywriting is like speaking to an invisible audience. It requires an inordinate amount of insightfulness and understanding of rudimentary human psychology to be an effective copywriter. What inspires your audience? What makes them furious, exasperated or ecstatic?

Shrewdness. As a copywriter, it will be your daily task to take skyscrapers of material, and condense them down to interesting morsels. You have to decide what information matters, and what can be rejected. This amalgamation of common sense, rational and savvy, add up to discernment. Good discernment is the deal breaker that decides whether your copy will sell or not.

I would like to help and offer advice on how to avoid making mistakes at the beginning of your new start up.

Trying to do it All
When we start out, we all seem to assume that because we are good at the selling point of the company (such as renting houses or baking cakes) we are qualified and able to run an entire business.
People of this mind-set soon learn that a successful business is a well-oiled machine that only runs smoothly on more than one skill.

A well-qualified experienced accountant  may not know the first thing about PR, marketing, networking, social media or any of the other crucial tasks needed to keep a business afloat.

Partly because of pride and partly due to lack of resources, many new business owners charge forward and attempt to do everything themselves.

Expecting Too Much Right Away
There are more than a million good reasons for wanting to go into business. It may be important to your morale as an entrepreneur that you realize successes such as critical acclaim and money; however you need to understand that these things will not fall into your lap. Often, the first year is a roller coaster ride that can both delight and terrify those in the driver’s seat.

Spending Too Much.
Whatever money you manage to pull together to fund your company are precious assets that are hard to get back once they are spent. Some new business owners who have little experience managing money unwittingly spend capital on unnecessary expenses. Remember, frugality is the winning mind-set when you start out. Your capital is to be spent on crucial business resources that have the potential to generate more revenue and build the business out.

Not Spending Enough
You might think this an oxymoron — after all, if capital is king and frugality is the winning mindset, how could not spending enough be a problem? Just as there are those who are loose with the purse strings, there are also those who are afraid to spend money, even on things that matter. A £200 consulting fee might seem like a lot to pay, but if the advice this consultant gives has the potential to solve your most vexing business problems and set you on course to tripling your revenue next month, it is a worthwhile investment.

We often have to explain to people that by hiring a virtual PA you will save money. How? Simply you can focus on making money whilst we deal with everything else!

I would like to help and offer advice on how to avoid making mistakes at the beginning of your new start up.

Trying to do it All
When we start out, we all seem to assume that because we are good at the selling point of the company (such as renting houses or baking cakes) we are qualified and able to run an entire business.
People of this mind-set soon learn that a successful business is a well-oiled machine that only runs smoothly on more than one skill.

A well-qualified experienced accountant  may not know the first thing about PR, marketing, networking, social media or any of the other crucial tasks needed to keep a business afloat.

Partly because of pride and partly due to lack of resources, many new business owners charge forward and attempt to do everything themselves.

Expecting Too Much Right Away
There are more than a million good reasons for wanting to go into business. It may be important to your morale as an entrepreneur that you realize successes such as critical acclaim and money; however you need to understand that these things will not fall into your lap. Often, the first year is a roller coaster ride that can both delight and terrify those in the driver’s seat.

Spending Too Much.
Whatever money you manage to pull together to fund your company are precious assets that are hard to get back once they are spent. Some new business owners who have little experience managing money unwittingly spend capital on unnecessary expenses. Remember, frugality is the winning mind-set when you start out. Your capital is to be spent on crucial business resources that have the potential to generate more revenue and build the business out.

Not Spending Enough
You might think this an oxymoron — after all, if capital is king and frugality is the winning mindset, how could not spending enough be a problem? Just as there are those who are loose with the purse strings, there are also those who are afraid to spend money, even on things that matter. A £200 consulting fee might seem like a lot to pay, but if the advice this consultant gives has the potential to solve your most vexing business problems and set you on course to tripling your revenue next month, it is a worthwhile investment.

We often have to explain to people that by hiring a virtual PA you will save money. How? Simply you can focus on making money whilst we deal with everything else!

Buy into branding. Ensure that all of your branding (strapline, business signature, illustrations, photo, colour scheme, etc) is used consistently in your marketing efforts.

Discover your target market before you begin marketing. Your printed material, web site, and advertising will be much more effective and less costly if you have your marketing strategy established first. Then you’re simply following your plan in all that you do. Avoid reactive marketing or even worse a ‘scatter technique’

Network efficiently and effectively. If you don’t feel that you are a competent networker, now is the time to learn how, the most important rule of networking – Don’t sell to the room.

Learn this off by heart- ‘inconsistent advertising is wasted money.’ A potential customer must be exposed to the same message numerous times before they are ready to entertain a buying decision. Pick a medium of advertising where you can afford to have a consistent presence.

Look for ways to determine yourself as an expert in your field. Speaking engagements, publication articles and social media can all help identify you as a specialist in your chosen subject.

Keep all marketing communications distinct, concise and focused…Much like this sentence.

E-marketing

Don’t confuse email marketing with conventional sales letters. These two mediums are two entirely different techniques. You must understand that email marketing is much more immediate than a letter you receive in the post. You have seconds to capture the customer’s attention. The most important difference is the subject line. If you have a weak subject line your open rate will be very poor.

Your email should be 400-500 hundred words at a maximum. Do not underestimate this. Research confirms our suspicions that people see a long email and postpone reading it. Nine times out of ten this results in the recipient going on to something else and completely forgetting about it. If you need to say more you can place a link at the end of the email that brings the customer to a more detailed page.

It’s usually better to send 100 targeted than 1000 generic emails. If the client cannot relate and understand that actually yes, this is exactly what they are looking for, it is a wasted attempt. One of the great things about email marketing is you can split your campaigns into different groups where you can store individually tailored offers. Precision marketing gives you a much greater chance of bonding with the prospective client.

Develop the momentum like you would if you were writing a story. This means that you need to generate excitement and anticipation. This is particularly relevant to email marketing as everything is so immediate when using this tool. A letter placed in someone’s hand can be put on the side to be reread again later. If you can stir emotions in email marketing you are nearly always going to be successful.

Always say what you are offering from the very beginning. You will lose the trust of your reader if you try to surreptitiously sell something without mentioning what you are offering until the last paragraph. You will often see this technique used in inadequate quality websites selling inferior products.

Blogging is beneficial for any website. In a nutshell, adding new content to your website lets search engines know your site is original and current.
We experimented recently – we decided not to blog for a month. The amount of visitors fell by just shy of half!

Generate a plan for the customer you are trying to engage with and create a new post at least once a week. Remember-  Each new post or entry is its own webpage.  Writing frequently will amplify  the possibility that search engines will bring traffic to your blog. If your blog site and copy is outdated, it presents a poor reflection of your company.

Many people ask how often their blog should be updated, this is an entirely subjective question and is open to debate. My advice; whatever frequency you choose make sure it is consistent. For this reason my advice above to blog weekly is best. You may not be able to commit to a daily blog but everyone can do something weekly. In my mind, blogging less than this is as good as saying; ‘we don’t have much to talk about,’

In addition to this it doesn’t encourage search engines to ‘crawl’ your website. The best thing with a high frequency of blogging- you show up more in search results.

How to write a business blog.

Don’t ramble, keep to the point and make sure what you are saying is useful. You don’t need to fine tune a blog; it is supposed to be conversational and friendly.

By writing a blog you are showing your company is open and honest. Make sure you stick to this, never ever write anything that isn’t true and don’t use your blog as a marketing tool. You can mention new products and explain how to use current ones but don’t do this every week, no one will want to read it!  A blog is not the place for business jargon or marketing propaganda.

The technical bit – research your topic, making sure you use relevant keywords and links. There is a fine line however, if you overdo links Google may assume your content is spam.

SEO experts believe that search engines place more weight on linked text than unlinked text when ranking search engine results.  Consequentially it’s a good idea to include your keywords in or next to the links within your blog posts, but only when it’s relevant to do so.

My ‘IT guy’ told me today these are the search terms people use to find us.
Well that’s great but it’s a fraction of what we do. For a start we cover the whole of the UK. In fact; we have clients in Poland and Mexico!

Why aren’t people searching for us for copywriting? We excel at this. We recently wrote the whole of a client’s website. It was a new page (search engines don’t give it much clout due to this) but within a week, he was on page one of Google. Surely people must know we copywrite?

No? Okay; well we do!

I think the problem is we started as a company that only supplied virtual PA services. Over time, as we grew I ensured each new employee had his or her own ‘niche’ so we now boast a team that can provide book keeping, proof reading, copywriting, marketing, PR, PA services and event organisation. Perhaps it’s time for a rebrand?

The persona I want to avoid – ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ each of our team is fully experienced in their field.

Oh and since you asked; my favourite business quote is  ’In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.’ –Harold Geneen

Part of his role ties in rather nicely with our copywriter. Her role is to take information and create content with it. This could be anything from a white paper, to creating a strap line to a blog. Once the content is created he publicizes it for the client. After all, it’s no good writing something that no one sees!

As I am sure you know blogs are great for your business. I can think of countless reasons why but a few of them are:

• A blog encourages footfall. People will see your website and remember you.
• You can inform people about chosen topics, therefore proving yourself as a knowledgeable source and a great person to work with.
• If ever you need to recruit and you have a following on your blog, why waste £££ on a recruitment specialist? One of your followers is likely to be skilled in your niche and interested enough to read about it!
• SEO. As well as the direct traffic benefit of leads, links are important in bringing in search visitors. The more linkable your website, the better your search results will be. Very often traditional websites are difficult to link to and not easy for search engines to index. This can be due to the website’s structure, the software it’s built with, or its overly complex URLs. Blogs are almost always superior in this respect.
• A blog builds trust. Much like social media a blog shows a glimmer of your personality and people are more likely to work with people they know.

If you are thinking of ‘going it alone’ and not resourcing help from a copywriter please feel free to email info@virtual-pa-uk.com for a completely free document that gives you 40 tips on what to blog about and how to make your blog successful.

Effective blogging is a vital ingredient in your marketing mixture. It encourages engagement with your customers and attracts traffic to your website.

Then why do so many people hold back from doing so? Lack of time seems to be a major factor, after all our biggest worry is having a business to run!

Some people feel they have nothing to blog about. If you have ever feel like this I want you to stop and look at your business. What do you know that others could learn from? Don’t use your blog as a hard sell, use it to educate people and tell a story.

Many people relegate the blog and concentrate on other activities; they leave it as an idea that will simmer away without ever boiling.

A good way to get the wheels in motion is to sit down, think of ten topics that others may be interested to read about and distribute the titles around your team, each person can write a blog and you have some unique content.

Alternatively hire a copywriter to help you (not a hard sell, honest!)

We are currently giving away a PDF full of blogging ideas. For a free copy please contact info@virtual-pa-uk.com

Whilst working on a job it is often awkward or impossible to answer a call and many people will redial the next number on the list until they get through to someone who can answer. Is it worth losing the job for the pennies you will spend on having someone answer your phone? Our telephone answering charges are just £0.35 per minute.

As the partner of a lettings agent who uses plumbers, electricians, pest controllers, builders and locksmiths on a daily basis,  I know only too well how badly many tradesmen and women do with paperwork. It is difficult to work a full day and then spend your evenings doing admin. Alternatively some people we have come across take a day off a week in order to complete invoicing and bookkeeping.

It is an unfortunate state of mind that people do not want to pay out for a job they can do themselves. However try looking at it this way.
You pay us an hourly rate of £21 (or£18 if you book more than 15 hours) nine times out of ten a trade-persons hourly rate is more than that. You can use that time to go out and work now.
By not doing your admin, you are actually making money! (If you do your paperwork in the evenings, take your call out fee into account as well)

It’s something to consider if you are looking to earn more money.