Chris Cardell Blog with marketing, business and general Chris Cardell's advice
When a survey asked the question “what comes to mind when you think about salesmen”, the most common answer was… “pushy”. And I think it’s something we can all relate to. We’ve all seen the Carry On films and similar where someone (literally) sticks their foot in the door (and the laughter when the lady …
Continue reading “How to sell more by gaining respect and trust from your market”
Testimonials are one of the most powerful ways to drive new business. The reason is to do with trust: trust, or lack of it, is one of the big barriers to doing business, especially online where not only are identity-theft and other scams a real (if over-exaggerated) fear for many people, but in the vast …
Continue reading “How to Get and Use Testimonials from Your Customers”
It’s bound to happen sometime, as sure as night follows day. You make a sale or carry out a service for client, and you think everything is fine. And then suddenly, out of the blue, comes a complaint, like an arrow suddenly slamming into your desk. You know you did a great job, you’re pretty …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – Transforming Complaints into Profits”
If you’ve been studying Marketing and Sales for more than five minutes, you’ll have heard the expression “the money is all in the list”. It happens to be true, but there are a few things worth looking at in more detail because it’s a truth many business owners either fail to understand or fail to …
Continue reading “Understanding the Power of List Segmentation”
If there’s one thing you should learn and take to heart when it comes to increasing profits in your business, it’s that email marketing works. If you use email marketing you’ll make more sales and make more money. It’s that simple. But (and it’s a big but) email marketing works only if you do it …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – The Power of Email Marketing”
Have you ever had the experience of seeing a movie trailer and thinking “That looks great”, but when you actually go to see it you find it doesn’t amount to much? Flat characters, boring story, terrible acting, and you come away feeling bitterly disappointed. Or maybe you’ve sometime heard great things about a restaurant, perhaps …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – What Your website visitors REALLY want”
There’s an old story about an advertising agency getting ready to pitch for the account with British Rail, the company which ran the UK railways before privatisation and which was famous for late-running and cancelled trains, filthy stations and awful food. The agency was a small one as these things go, and knew it would …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – How to Fix what you can’t see in your business”
One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make time and again is to concentrate on getting more leads to the detriment of something just as, if not more, important. They put a lot of effort into their lead-generation but then they miss out something so fundamental to marketing that, in many cases, almost all …
Continue reading “Follow-Up – The Secret ingredient to increase Your sales”
One of the problems with having a site ranking highly in the SERPs or being popular because of your activity and exposure on the various Social Media platforms is you get loads of traffic… but while it’s relevant to the overall theme of your site it’s not well matched in any specific way with your …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – Getting More Website Visitors”
Just recently I’ve been doing a lot of work with the new Gold Mastermind group, including looking at many of the Members’ websites — layout, design, content and so on. And while there are many simple mistakes I see over and over again, perhaps the least obvious to the untrained eye is in the content …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – The Trouble with Being Boring”
When we talk about sales conversions we tend to look at the whole idea of a “conversion” as being a single event. But very often it simply isn’t that at all, and is in fact a more complex process involving at least two steps – and often many more. If you send an email for …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – The Horror of Cart Abandonment”
Most websites simply are not fit for purpose. They’re designed from the wrong premise, that the site needs to have a certain “look” that ties in with the company’s “brand”. The correct premise is to first decide what you want the website to do. Once you have the answer to that, it will tell you …
Continue reading “7 Internet Marketing basics that no one tells you about”
If you’ve studied online marketing for any length of time you’ll have come across the phrase “squeeze page”, which sometimes goes by the name “opt-in page”. Whatever you call it, essentially the page has a simple purpose, and that’s to gather the contact details of prospective customers so you can follow-up with them.
Of late you’ll no doubt be aware I’ve quite forcefully been putting people off the idea of SEO and a very unhealthy reliance on so-called free traffic. While my arguments are sound and have been borne out over and over again, there’s still a lot of resistance to them from many, if not most, business …
Continue reading “Top 5 Free ways of getting qualified traffic to your website”
There’s an old saying which goes: “You can’t have your cake and eat it”. In other words, you can’t use a resource and keep it at the same time, and it’s something business-owners are well aware of. Sell that unit of product, and it’s sold, never to be sold again. Use that money to buy …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – The Amazing Power of Content Creation”
One of the most common and powerful pieces of advice I give to business owners is to figure out the demographics of their top 20% of clients and then spend 80% of more of their time and marketing efforts to get more people just like that. It’s very simple, very straightforward, and it’s an almost …
Continue reading “What Is The 80/20 Rule and How It Will Change Your Business”
Ask most business-owners what’s the most important thing in getting more customers, and you’ll get a massive range of answers. Some will say having a really good product — the best on the market if at all possible — is the best way to do it. Others will say having a really great website. Still …
Continue reading “Chris Cardell – How to make your prospective clients trust you”
Direct mail is one of the most powerful ways to engage with your target market — especially your current and past customers and clients — yet it’s something few business owners are successful with.
You’re no doubt already aware one of the key principles of marketing is measuring and testing. After all, we can’t possibly know if our marketing efforts are bearing fruit unless we can measure the results of what we’re doing. And once we’ve measured how effective a given strategy is, then it’s only a small step …
