My Marketing Mentor

Why you should enter business awards

This month I'd like to share with you a really fabulous way to promote your business. Apart from taking a bit of your time, it’s completely free and can be incredibly effective.

Entering business awards can seem a bit daunting at first. A lot of small business owners I have worked with over the years have felt quite intimidated at the thought of entering such awards. Often they don’t feel like they really deserve to be recognised for their business efforts, let alone win an award.   

Here are some really good reasons why it is a good idea to enter business awards:
 

• Helps position you as the “expert” in your field
• Gets your name out there
• It’s free
• You’re very likely to meet some really inspiring people
• You might actually win – and that feels great!
• Even if you don’t win, the whole process is most likely to be a fantastic experience

I won a couple of business awards for my previous business in the UK. This lead to a local radio interview, which lead to a TV (BBC) interview, which lead to being asked to speak at one of the biggest SME events in the UK. In short, I received the kind of publicity money can't buy.  

There are plenty of business awards throughout the year (I endeavour to let you know about as many as possible), some of which may be specific to your industry. A little search on good old Google will be a good start to finding out about them.

Are you willing to give it a go? The Telstra Business Awards telstrabusinessawards.com is taking entries until 5pm AEST on Monday 4 April 2011. Good luck!

Google Analytics

A few years ago you would have had to cough up several thousands of dollars to access a tool, which gives you detailed statistics about traffic to your website. Thanks to Google, this tool is now available to everyone, for FREE, and it's called Google Analytics (let's call it GA) - http://www.google.com/analytics/

Why do YOU need GA? Chances are you've paid good money for your website. Now it's time to find out how well your investment is working for you. GA can be a little bit confusing and overwhelming at first. Spend a bit of time on it, and it will start to make more sense. A great source for GA help comes in the form of YouTube videos, so if you want to find out more just go to  http://www.youtube.com/user/googleanalytics 

Once you're up and running (usually you'll start to see stats within 24hrs of creating the account) GA will provide you with information on how many visitors your site is getting, your visitor location and the number of new visitor versus old visitors. It will also tell you which key words people are searching for to find you in search engines. You'll receive invaluable insight into how people are interacting with your site, as it gives you information on which page people are landing on, how much time they spend on each and which page they exit from.

 

From a Marketing perspective, all of the above provide priceless insight into which key words to use on your website, which pages may need rewriting, which referrals are working for you etc.  

 

One word of warning. GA can become seriously addictive, especially if you love numbers and statistics. To avoid spending all your time on GA, I recommend scheduling analytics reviews. 

 

Have you been using Google Analytics for a while? What's been your experience?