Alice Elliott's blog

Thoughts of a visual marketer

How to get more people to open your newsletters

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

One of the features of Appletree’s newsletter system JAC shows how many of your newsletter’s recipients have opened it (and there is also a new feature that shows you who has opened it too and how many times). One statistic is that newsletters with large mailing lists seem to show a [...]
Why do some small businesses fail?

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

This question arose during one of my regular meet-ups with a couple of friends who set up their businesses at the same time as me and now are either struggling or have given up.
Careful consideration arrived at these points:
• Lack of processes in place: certainly in my case I didn’t have a series of processes [...]
How to do marketing for free

Monday, November 16th, 2009

This is a good subject for start-ups and very small businesses who don’t have a large budget to work with..
The first free marketing method is networking. Go to as many meetings as possible, particularly the free events or those that don’t require a big entrance fee. But to make these successful you must arm yourself [...]
Give guinea pigs more of a marketing girth!

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Yesterday Chrissie Slade of Gorgeous Guineas came to see me for a half hour health check (but as always with me she got a bit more than just half an hour!).
Chrissie makes aromatherapy skin products for guinea pigs, and claims she’s the only one in the world doing this. It’s a fascinating little business, and [...]
What are your blogging barriers?

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Many people have told me that they are afraid to start blogging. Digging further into this revealed a number of different fears, and not necessarily about the technology side, which I thought was the main reason. Yes, technology is a hindrance, but it is something that can eventually be overcome with guidance. It is the [...]
Combine price and quality to attract customers

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

While visiting Nottingham we decided to go for a Chinese meal. Just down from our hotel was an restaurant called ‘Big Wok’, which looked enticing at £10 for all you could eat.
Now normally these ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ establishments skimp on quality for the sake of price, but we were pleasantly surprised. [...]
Customers' copy outweigh your business profile

Monday, July 13th, 2009

All copywriting, whether for web or paper, should be biased towards one thing: the customer.
Blabbing on about the company is a total waste of time, customers don’t give a tinker’s toot about the business, they only care about “what’s in it for them”, how will they benefit from the product or services offered, will it [...]
How aware are you of the power of the picture?

Friday, July 10th, 2009

I’ve just finished my blogging package ‘The Power of Pictures’.
This is just one of my series of blogging packages I’m creating to help women (and men) towards creating their own successful business blog. The first ones of the series are scheduled to be ready towards the end of July, so watch this space!
I like it [...]
Saying exactly what in the tin

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Following on from my visible networking material idea I came across this business card from Jill Wigmore-Welsh. I wanted to share it with you because it stood out from all the other business cards at this networking meeting I went to.
Why? Because the first thing it said is what she does, but in a way [...]
Treat Twitter respectfully for the right response

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Twitter is also called micro-blogging, because it is an opportunity for you to express yourself and tell the world all the facts about you and your business you are unable to fit into your website. It’s micro-blogging because it is confined to only 140 characters per ‘tweet’, which means you have to be concise with [...]