Calico Marketing – Design & Marketing Blog

What are you paying for when you buy a business?

November 18, 2021November 16, 2021 by Calico UK

When you buy a business, you are buying assets of a company but in reality, you are buying a stream of earnings to be earned by those
assets. The business assets are a means to make money but if they did not produce a cash flow, you would not be buying those assets.
The assets may have a liquidation value but price that you pay over and above that, the earning power of those assets is the goodwill
of the business.

In order to increase the value of the business, owners will have to have higher income. As a result, there is a possibility that the
owner will claim many of the business expenses are personal and do not need to be continued on after he/she left the business and all
the family members who are on the payroll are not really needed therefore should be added back in the normalized earnings.
Often, owners will state that there is cash sales in the business and that is where the profits can be found.

In my opinion, if you cannot prove the cash sales then they do not exist. If the owner knows that there are cash sales and he knows
that he is selling the business, why does he/she not come clean and deposit the cash in the business to prove what the actual sales are?

Your 10-Step Guide For Ensuring A Successful Office Relocation

November 16, 2021October 20, 2021 by Calico UK

An office relocation is not an operation that should be taken lightly. The potential fallout from a poorly planned and executed office relation can negatively impact a business for weeks, or months, and in the worst cases cause a business’s very existence to be jeopardised. Thankfully, those nightmare scenarios are rare, especially if you entrust your relocation to professional removalists.

That is just one of ten steps you should take to ensure that your office reaction goes smoothly, however, while it is probably the most important, it is not the first task you should undertake. Read on, and you will discover all ten, and the order we suggest you follow.

#1 Ensure Your Reasons For Relocating Make Business Sense: Never move your business because it ‘seems like a nice thing to do’. That simply costs money for no real benefit. Relocation should only occur if it makes business sense to do so.

#2 Carefully Select The New Location For Your Business: One of the core reasons for relocating is that it provides your business with benefits, and that is why the specific location you move to is critical. It should be to better or larger premises and take you closer to your suppliers if possible, and certainly closer to your target market.

5 Fundamental Reasons Why You Should Be Using Digital Marketing

October 2, 2021September 26, 2021 by Calico UK

There will be many small business owners reading this who might not see the merits of setting up and implementing a digital marketing campaign. It might be the word ‘campaign’ that makes it sound like a huge investment of time and money, but in truth a digital campaign can be simple and inexpensive., especially if you want to test it first, to analyse its success.

If even that small, tentative step seems a step too far for a small business owner, then the stark truth is they are harming the potential for their business to succeed and grow. There are lots of reasons why you should be marketing online, but to provide some focus we are going to highlight just 5 of them, albeit 5 very important and fundamental reasons to begin a digital marketing campaign.

Your Prospects Are Online

Let us start with the most fundamental reason that you should be marketing your small business online, and it is the simple fact that online is where your prospects are. People’s use of the internet has increased enormously in recent years and has further skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Going online is also where many people will do their research and look for the products and services they need. If your business does not have a presence of any significance online, as it would if it had embraced digital marketing, then, sadly, no potential prospects are likely to find it.

6 Ways To Positively Boost Your Brand Using Digital Marketing

October 20, 2021September 9, 2021 by Calico UK

In every competitive marketplace, there are several strategies you can use to gain an advantage over your competition, and one of the most effective is to make your brand the one which consumers see as the market leader, or at the very least, a brand which is trustworthy and reputable.

Knowing that a strong brand is necessary to hold sway over your competitors is one thing, but sadly too many business owners do not know how to achieve this successfully. In truth, there are several ways you can positively boost your brand, and arguably the most effective is to utilise digital marketing.

Digital marketing covers a vast array of strategies and channels, and whilst this might seem somewhat overwhelming to some, if you break down your objectives into smaller, manageable goals, then you are well on your way to success. As such, here are 6 relatively simple ways you boost your company’s brand and importantly, protect it once established, using digital marketing.

Foster Good Relations With The Social Media Influencers In Your Niche

Social media is one of the most underused and misused marketing channels online which means many businesses are missing out on a huge opportunity to use it to boost their brand. One of the most effective ways of doing so is to seek out and build a relationship with the influencers in your niche. Just one post from them to their thousands of followers can cement your brand in the minds of those followers, many of whom will fall within your target audience.

7 Little-Known PPC Advertising Tips To Increase Revenue

October 20, 2021July 23, 2021 by Calico UK

Any business which includes PPC advertising as part of its digital marketing strategy will want to ensure that the revenue generated is maximised. Whilst it can contribute to this aim by having an effective sales funnel and highly desirable products, there is a further way. That is to optimise its PPC campaign to the maximum, and it can do so by implementing some little-known PPC advertising tactics.

We say ‘little-known’ because even some marketing agencies are not fully aware of them all, and that means that the vast majority of business owners who are trying to use PPC advertising without expert guidance, will definitely not know of them. What this means for you is that if follow these 7 tips to maximise the returns from your PPC campaigns, then your ROI will be far superior to that being seen by your competition.

Quality Score Optimisation

Whilst most people who wish to market their business will be aware that Google ranks websites organically based on the quality of factors such as content and user experience, they may not be aware that Google also applies a quality score to PPC adverts. If you create high-quality ads that convert and which avoid spammy ad copy, Google can reward you with lower costs per click and higher ad positions.

Use More Than One PPC Platform

Google is the biggest PPC platform, but it is not the only one. Facebook, Microsoft (Bing), Twitter, Instagram and many other platforms also offer PPC advertising. This can benefit you in several ways such as lower costs per click, being able to compete for high volume keywords, and to A/B test ads for little cost. Many advertisers with big budgets ignore the smaller ad platforms leaving them open for smaller companies and budgets.

5 Digital Marketing Trends Which Cannot Be Ignored

October 20, 2021June 13, 2021 by Calico UK

If you were to ask any digital marketing agency what their biggest frustrations were, somewhere near the top there might be something relating to the digital marketing landscape constantly changing. In other words, trying to keep up with the latest trends, updates, software, tools, and tactics, not to mention Google making continual changes to its ranking factors, means you can never rest easy when you are a digital marketer.

Many will argue that they see this as a positive rather than a negative, and we tend to agree. The reason is that it keeps digital marketing vibrant, fresh, and interesting plus it means lazy marketers who are looking for short term fixes, will thankfully fall by the wayside. This leaves professional and dedicated digital marketers to help their clients who appreciate that marketing online is often a long term project and that there are very few shortcuts.

As for digital marketing constantly evolving this means that to have success you must keep up to date with what is happening and what trends are taking hold. That is why we thought it would be worthwhile to highlight 5 of the current trends within digital marketing so that you are not only aware of them, but if you take advantage of them you will have a head start on your competition.

Get Back To Basics

It might seem strange in an article about the latest trends that we start with a heading that says back to basics. However, just as trends in fashion and furniture can go retro occasionally, within digital marketing it seems like many of the simple principles that have stood the test of time are front and centre once again.

Is PPC Advertising A Shortcut To Traffic Versus SEO?

October 20, 2021April 1, 2021 by Calico UK

The simple answer to the above question is that it can be, but there are plenty of caveats that must be considered. First, we will be upfront and tell you that PPC advertising, especially on Google or Facebook, can be highly effective in certain circumstances, and if you feel that your business would benefit from it, then please get in touch with us at Slinky and one of our paid advertising specialists will be happy to advise you.

One of the things they might need to clear up with you is exactly how paid advertising online works, as many business owners are not entirely sure. Firstly, PPC advertising does require a significant amount of research and preparation. This involves determining which audience you are going to target, which keywords you wish to bid for, creating the ads themselves, and then assessing your budget and how much you wish to bid for each click.

The wrong thing to do is simply rush in without any preparation and expect to see floods of paid traffic, as it simply will not happen, and instead, you will have wasted your ad budget. So, whilst paid advertising might be somewhat quicker, it is not something that can be rushed.

5 Best Mobile Marketing Software And Apps

October 20, 2021January 14, 2021 by Calico UK

As technology has moved forward over the past 150 years, marketing has had to move forward too. From it first being purely being seen in print form, it then was heard on the radio, seen in cinemas, then on TV, and with the introduction of the internet, marketing moved online. But that is not the end of the story, because, with the huge expansion in the use of mobile phones in recent years, marketing for mobile is now a massive opportunity for businesses.

By mobile, we are not just talking about mobile phones, albeit they are by far the most used mobile device, but other mobile devices too such as tablets, smartwatches, and even handheld gaming consoles. As we now take making a mobile phone call for granted it almost seems like it is the secondary reason for using a mobile device, with the ability to connect to the internet now being the primary reason.

With this point in mind, and given that almost every prospect is likely to have at least one mobile device which they use to connect to the internet, any business that cannot see the value of marketing to mobile devices is missing out on a huge opportunity. Further, if they ignore mobile marketing, and their competition embraces it, they are at an even greater disadvantage when it comes to finding and acquiring new customers.

For the doubters or those who want to start mobile marketing but think it might be difficult, the good news is that there are plenty of tools, software and apps that make mobile marketing possible. Most are relatively easy to use, and once set up and generating leads and prospects you will wish you had started sooner. As for those aids to mobile marketing, here are 5 of the top solutions.

Textedly

SMS messaging is a highly effective means of marketing and communication, and with Textedly, you have the means to implement and monitor SMS marketing campaigns. It allows you to schedule mass text message sending to your target audience and it also provides for inbound messaging too. This means you can react immediately if someone responds directly to one of your marketing text messages.

How do you find the right business?

November 18, 2021October 16, 2020 by Calico UK

If you do not know what you want to do, the easiest way to narrow the choices is to determine what do you not want to do.
Do you want to go into business for yourself, do you to buy a business, do you want to work from home?

Once you determine what you do not want to do, then determine what interests you, what are you good at.
From there, decide if you have any contacts in that field. Would they be willing to buy your products or your service?
It is easier to sell to a person you know then a complete stranger.

Many people when they want a career change do not know what to do. Sometimes you can look for years before you come up with something that will interest you. My wife was bored of her job and wanted a change but did not know what she wanted. Her father sold his house and the
real estate agent brought in a home stager to prepare the house. My wife had never heard of this profession before and she talked to the
person staging the house and then decided that was the business for her.

That was 3 years ago but she took 3 years to find something of interest. She looked at many different opportunities, many were interesting
but not interesting enough to be in that field every day. She was lucky, when she was not looking, a new idea stumbled into her lap.