Robert Agar-Hutton (who was born in 1953) has a varied background as an accountant, a computer programmer and systems analyst, a business and marketing consultant, a website designer, a trainer, an after dinner and motivational speaker, an author and a martial artist with over thirty four years of experience.
OK so you know enough to avoid too much ‘stuff’ on your website. You avoid the pop-ups and graphics and pictures plus fifty-three other things on each page that makes a site look too busy and uncoordinated. You’ve also done your best to optimise your site for the search engines, included meta-tags (yes I know they are not what they used to be but you should still include them), you have relevant content; you have checked keyword density, etc, etc.
Of course you check your site regularly to make sure all the links (both internal and external) are working properly and you know that updating your site’s content regularly is important too.
So with all these things and many more done and dusted, why, oh why, do you not have a great website?I suggest that this is because of the following reasons. 1. You have not taken the time to accurately figure out WHO your potential customers/clients actually are.
2. You don’t proactively contact your customers/clients to draw them to your website.
3. You haven’t educated or encouraged them so that they will return to visit your website regularly.
4. Your content does not significantly give value to your customers/clients.
Let’s look at each of the above in a bit more detail:
WHO are your customers?
You need to know exactly which market segment(s) you are trying to sell to and you need to have a very detailed knowledge of exactly who it is that you want your website to appeal to.
Look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and compare it withhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/default.stm.
One is BBC news for adults and the other is BBC news for children. Compare how the same story is given a different treatment so as to be relevant to the target audience. Do you tell your ‘story’ in the best way to educate and entertain your target visitors?
Proactively contact potential customersDon’t just rely on search engines or Google AdWords. Think of all the different ways you can let people know about your site.
l Is it printed on your business card?
l Is it on your car?
Basically, do you do everything you can to drive people to your site?
Encourage visitors to come back to your site
Make your site information rich. Make it topical. Offer regular ‘freebies’ to visitors (A freebie can be something as simple as an informative report that you write or a monthly newsletter).
Give value!What do you give a visitor to your website that they consider to be of value and which will tempt them into doing business with you? It can be something as simple as relevant information.
However beware of giving too much. If you want your prospect to make contact with you, then you need to tempt them not overeducate them.
If you look at a lot of websites (as I do) you will be aware of the trend that has grown up in the last few years of giving ‘bonuses’ away. I don’t like this. Does it work for some sites? Yes, but it devalues the original product or service being offered. Make sure that everything that you offer is GREAT value for money.
Of course you would. I bet you think the answer is something like ‘My lack of knowledge’ or ‘I need more capital’ or ‘The market place is too mature for a new player like me’ or…
Well all of those reasons and a thousand more may well be true but the number one reason that stops you being successful is: Lack Of FocusLet’s start right at the beginning. Have you really focused in on what ‘Being a Success’ actually means to you? Is it to own a Ferrari? If so, how much money exactly will you need to pay for insurance, maintenance, etc, etc? Is it having a bigger house? If so, how much bigger exactly and where will it be?
You see you need to know IN DETAIL exactly what you want. Exactly what being successful means to you. You should write it down and then review your success statement regularly because things change.
Next, and this is often overlooked, does your definition of success meet with the approval of those it’s going to affect? Have you really focused in on what those around you (who are important to you) want? You want to move to the country but your kids want to stay in town with their friends. You want a bigger house but your partner doesn’t.
Even more importantly, have you focused in detail on your core values and checked that they support your definition of success?You might, for example, be much more interested in people than in things so a success statement that lists things like £1,000,000 in the bank, a Ferrari 456 and a six-bedroom house may not actually be important to you at a core motivational level. Write down the answer to the question “What are my core values?” and see if they support your success statement.
Next you have to focus on strategy. Most people in business (myself included) get bogged down in the day-to-day running of the business. That’s called Tactics. It’s critically important but it should always be subservient to your strategy. Strategy is the master plan which shows where you are and where you want to be and (in broad terms) how you intend to get there. You simply cannot focus enough on this area of your business!
So having got your strategy in place you have to focus on the dayto-day tactics and here again lack of focus lets us down. The phone rings whilst you are designing a webpage or an important letter arrives and you have to reschedule your morning or…
So what can you do?There is a very simple little tool that you can use. Look at the following diagram.
Not urgent but critical Urgent and Critical
Not urgent Not critical Urgent but Not critical
Then look at all the things you are intending to do in the next few hours and divide them into the four quadrants. Things that are ‘urgent and critical’ do at once, then do ‘critical but not urgent’ then do the ‘urgent but not critical’ and finally, if you have enough time left, then do the ‘not urgent and not critical’ tasks. It may seem like quite a simple set of rules but I guarantee that you (just like me) often find yourself wasting time doing ‘non urgent non critical’ tasks when you actually have ‘urgent and critical things’ to do.
Success generally does not come from being a lot better it comes from being a little bit better nearly all of the time. Apply the right amount of focus to the right things and your ability to succeed will improve exponentially.
It’s Strategic Planning, that is long term planning that defines what you want to do and where you want to be in one, two, five and ten years time. Now we all know that we want to be rich, famous and good looking but how the heck are you going to get there without a plan.
Why do we tend not to have strategic plans (or if we do, we forget to regularly review them)? It’s because it is so easy to get bogged down in the day to day tactical considerations of running the business.
So, let’s be ruthless – grab your diary and cross out the next two free days that you have (even if it’s a weekend) and mark them ‘Strategic Planning Session’. Go on, do it.
Now some research, go to Google and type in “strategic business planning”. You will get some interesting websites, possibly including the following – please note that I am not giving any endorsement and you should not rely on anything you find on the web as the sole source of your business decisions:
www.barclaysmicrosites.co.uk/start_up/startup.html
www.planware.org/strategy.htm?source=trpanel
www.businessballs.com/freebusinessplansandmarketing... www.sba.gov/managing/strategicplan/guide.html
So you start to read up on the subject and I can almost guarantee that the first thing you will find is that a lot of plans do NOT seem to be relevant to your business. They might talk about management structures and there you are thinking “It’s only me…” Don’t worry, you are enough, and if you are the management then it makes really good sense to know your own strengths and weaknesses, skills and shortcomings so that your strategic plan (warts and all) is realistic and achievable.
The thing that people sometimes forget is that Strategic Planning needs to have a goal. It’s not (most of the time) about producing some large bulky document that looks good to your bank manager. No, it should serve the purpose of signposting for you all the major events in your business future. It acts as the overview against which you measure all the day-to-day tactical decisions that you make. Does doing ‘X’ take me nearer or further away from my strategic objectives is a question that should ALWAYS be close to your heart.
So let’s look at a few specifics:
1. Know what your desired business outcomes are.
2. Know why you need a strategic plan.
4. Your plan needs to exist in hardcopy on your desk so you can refer to it over and over again.
5. Check that EVERYTHING that you do conforms to your strategic plan.
6. Stay with the plan.
7. Change the plan if you must but only when the change will improve the plan. Even then, don’t change STRATEGY too often. Changing tactics is fine and necessary but changing strategy means that you haven’t started off in the right way.
In order to keep to your strategic plan you will need to be ruthless. Look at the work you did today – were you interrupted? Did you look at a website (the BBC news website is my own personal downfall) and get sidetracked into doing something else?
Did some glib salesman (or email advert) get you to spend money on something that will ‘make you rich’ but in a totally different direction to that which you actually want to go?
It’s SO EASY to get sidetracked in business and you need to stay on track if you are going to be a success. A bad plan that is kept to and is well executed will out-perform a great plan that is ignored or constantly changed!