During this holiday season – when things are probably a little quieter – maintenance on this blog will take place.
Basically, I’m getting my server and blog updated. It means the site may be down for short periods over the next week, well it has to be fitted around Christmas activities too!
So if you try to visit and the site has ‘disappeared’ be assured it will be back shortly.
Thank you for reading my musings over the past year, enjoy the festive season and my best wishes for a brilliantly successful 2012.
Fraudsters are probably upping their game trying to grab your cards and pin numbers in time for their Christmas shopping. This timely warning describes one such scam in pictures so you can recognise the tell-tale signs at the cash-machines.
An email from Tony, one of my blog readers, kindly warned me about this card scam. Having your card stolen is bad enough but this one also attempts to fool you into giving your pin number up as well.
It is a very simple process – but potentially devastating for anyone caught by it. The 17-page PDF (link below) shows, in picture format, exactly how it is done and how to avoid it happening to you.
I suggest you tell anyone you know and care for about this, but as the PDF file is about 500k in size, it may be easier for you to suggest that your friends visit this post to get a copy for themselves.
The most obvious answer to the question ‘How can you make your customer smile when asking them to pay a late invoice’ may be to remind them of the brilliant service or product they purchased. This morning I saw a different way to get that smile and payment…
Payment reminders are often curt and sometimes unfriendly… ‘if payment is not received within 10 days we may have to take debt-recovery proceedings‘ – the one that arrived on my friend’s doorstep was the exact opposite. And, when she showed it to me, it made me chuckle.
This is what it said…
Dear Customer,
Here we go with a little rhyme. To remind you that your payment has not been made in time.
To enable us to keep our customers happy. Could you raise our payment and make it snappy.
The sender may not be a Poet Laureate – but it is certainly a different, friendlier way of asking for their payment.
How do you encourage your customers to pay your invoices?
It is always good to get insider tips from professional experts and I found Faith Tait’s presentation at a recent business meeting particularly interesting.
Why?
Because she described the best approach to creating a press release… or as she prefers to call it a News Release… that increases the chances of it being accepted and published.
I’m sure you know, as well as I do, that the publicity you get from a news release is truly valuable. It is a story about you or your company or your product or service that brings your business to the attention of prospective customers.
Faith* gave us a few pointers I’d like to share with you. You may already know about these, as I did, but it never does any harm to be reminded – does it?
Top 10 News Release Tactics For Getting Your Story Published
Remember, your news release is not an advert or a sales letter. It should be written in the ‘third-party’. Unlike a sales letter, where I always advise you to write to the individual that is reading your letter, a news release is reporting a story.
Consider your headline carefully. It should attract without being too sensational or sales orientated.
Be careful about the content. If it looks like a blatant advert it will be immediately tossed out.
Consider which publications are most appropriate for your business and story, the ones your target audience is most likely to read. Is the story relevant for your local newspaper readers or would it be better in a trade magazine or other publication?
If possible get your news release accepted for the ‘safe pages’ – these are the first pages laid down in a publication; the ones that are not likely to be changed if important news breaks just before publishing. You have a better chance of getting into these if you send your news release in early enough to be selected.
Following on from the previous point; check submission dates with the journalist. You need to know the earliest date for submission as well as final deadlines. Submitting too early can be as bad as submitting late.
Be considerate to the journalist you are sending your news release to. Think about their submission deadlines; they will be different for different media – e.g. daily or weekly newspapers will have a different schedule to monthly or quarterly magazines.
Check with the journalist how they would like to receive your news release. If sending by email (as most people do these days) some prefer the content to be in the email others prefer to have an attachment.
Always offer to supply a good quality picture to accompany your news release.
If your picture is taken at an event you are running make sure you get model releases for any people in the photo before submitting. You don’t want to upset anyone and some people do not like their picture splashed in the media. Plus, you reduce the chance of getting future news releases published if complaints are made to the publication.
Another point to remember is try to find different angles for your releases. Doing so makes it potentially more appealing to your journalist.
Faith gave us a list of angles (or edges) for news releases – her A-W list. She gave me permission to share these with you…
* Background: For Faith, working in the media and providing media training have gone hand in hand for more than twenty years. She spent 12 years in radio, has connections within television and her writing for magazines and newspapers is ongoing. She has helped businesses of all sizes; public sector organisations and PR professionals to set up long term, confident and effective media relations, reaping the rewards of free, high impact media publicity with measurable returns.
Are You Interested… Here’s What We Are Planning
Knowing how to promote your business through publicity (preferably good publicity) as well as how to write direct response marketing letters is a valuable skill in business today – especially for the smaller business owner who does not always have access to expert professional help.
So Faith and I are exploring the possibility of holding a 1-day workshop; how to write an effective sales letter in the morning (presented by me) and how to write an effective news release that gets accepted (presented by Faith) in the afternoon session.
The event will be a hands-on workshop during which we will answer individual questions and offer personal advice to each person during the writing exercises. Giving this level of personal attention means we will only be able to take a limited number of people.
If you’d like to know more about the workshop – no commitment – then please register your interest below:
As I said, registering does not place you under any further obligation.
There are many ‘sins’ that it is easy to commit when writing sales letters. In fact it can be difficult to remember them all, although experience does help to avoid the majority.
Chris Marlow is a copywriters’ coach – yes, professional copywriters do need guidance and help sometimes as well – and she created a list of 10 copywriting sins that should be avoided – hmm… I wonder if maybe they could also be regarded as the ’10 Copywriting Commandments’?
Anyway, although the content is geared for professional copywriters, a number of the tips are handy for anyone writing their own copy so I got Chris’ permission to share them with you.
Some I’ve mentioned in previous posts, but it is handy to have them all together… and, for your convenience, I’ve popped them into a PDF file you can download.
There was a presentation on how to structure news releases to promote your business at a business meeting I attended recently. I’ll share some useful insights and another free gift from that with you soon. Keep a look out for my next post.
Bullying in the playground and workplace is unpleasant, but bullying between businesses can be just as destructive as well as expensive, as I realised whilst chatting to my accountant.
We were talking about a new venture I’m launching with a business partner. When I told him the name we had chosen for our new business he advised us to go for something different.
“Why?” I asked
“Because it’s got the word ‘Easy’ in it.” He went on to explain.. “We’re changing our name from Easytax Accountants to Worth Accountants because Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, owner of the easyGroup, threatened to take legal action against us. His solicitors claimed an infringement of the easyGroup’s rights under a registered Community Trade Mark.”
Apparently easyGroup has registered the word ‘easy’ as a Community Trade Mark giving it protected rights within the EU.
He went on “So, although our trademark attorneys feel there is a good chance of successfully defending our case, because the word ‘easy’ is not a distinctive mark here in the UK, I’m not prepared to invest the additional time and money it would take.”
I was shocked.
In my opinion that’s bullying tactics from a big business that can afford the legal fees more readily than a smaller business. (You can read Steve’s press release about his re-branding at Easy Take-Off for Worth Accountants). What are your thoughts?
So we decided to change our new business name from EasyMarketingApps to Apps4SME. It has delayed our launch but we felt it was better to do it now to avoid potentially expensive problems in the future.
In the meantime my accountant has to budget for the unplanned costs associated with re-branding.
(BTW – if you are located in the south of England and want an accountant that is easy to access and talk to – doesn’t just turn up at year end – then I can heartily recommend the newly styled Worth Accountants).
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