Yesterday I received a call from a new customer with a web content project. How did he hear of Moonsail? Was it a contact I’d made through networking? Was he from one of the companies I’d spoken to during one of my ‘cold-calling’ campaigns? No actually, he’d seen a couple of my articles on Business in Berkshire and taken a look at my profile page before checking the ‘official’ Moonsail website.
Looking back over the past few weeks I realise this is becoming quite common. In fact around 75% of my recent projects have come – directly or indirectly – as a result of my association with B in B ! Which is quite a result; something worthy of a quick analysis…
When I first hooked up with Jon Davey last September, I’d only been in business just over a month and things were pretty quiet. I was networking like mad but only generating a handful of small one-off projects – nowhere near enough to sustain a business. In the course of cold-calling I picked up the Yellow Pages and phoned round all the companies listed under ‘marketing’ in the local directory. That’s how I first got in touch with Jon and he invited me round for a chat.
His suggestion was simple. He needed some help on the copywriting front but couldn’t afford to pay someone to write full-time. I needed publicity for my business and the chance to prove that yes, I really could write. A mutual agreement was reached: I would provide some regular material for the Business in Berkshire newsletter; in return I’d have my Business in Berkshire account ‘free’. Like all such arrangements I had some initial concerns that I’d end up ‘giving’ more than ‘gaining’ but time has shown that I needn’t have worried – the returns are flowing my way.
One of the advantages of using Business in Berkshire to promote a business is the impressive search engine rankings. Regular updates of fresh, relevant material on a daily basis help attract the search engines. If I type my company name into Google and do a search, it’s not unusual to find I’ve scored the entire first page of search results – and nearly always it’s the Business in Berkshire material that comes up first (links to my articles). Out of curiosity I’ve just tried it and scored 9/10 – 2 links to my official site and the other 7 B in B – related. Pretty amazing.
Establishing a strong reputation, building a company profile, telling people what you do (over and over…), word of mouth referrals – all essential to marketing any new small business. Business in Berkshire has proved to be the perfect platform to do ALL of these things.
Business in Berkshire uses Wordtracker to help manage our micro site owner accounts. It is the perfect tool for establishing the search strings that people are actually searching... Rather than assuming... go open your own account...